Roasted Asparagus with Gingered Rhubarb Sauce

One reason to cook through a book is to try out recipes that I wouldn't otherwise have tackled because of the technique or the ingredients or both. This recipe is an example of that: it involves asparagus, which I love, and rhubarb, which I don't. Note how the rhubarb is hulking in a dark corner in this picture, big and brooding, waiting to attack the poor delicate asparagus.

I don't love rhubarb because of its tart and bitter qualities. I always eat it when it's offered to me, but it's not my favorite. And then last spring I made a rhubarb crumble that made me reconsider my distaste for the vegetable. So I thought I'd give this recipe a shot.

It's a pretty simple process: you roast asparagus in the oven (I threw in a spring onion as well because I had one) while you brown butter and then sauté ginger, garlic, and rhubarb until the rhubarb breaks down. Then you add a few good squeezes of honey to balance out the tart rhubarb.

As Melissa Clark points out, rhubarb sauce is not pretty, but I don't think it's that hideous, either. We had this dish with macaroni and cheese, and I thought the big flavors of the sharp and spicy rhubarb asparagus balanced out the creamy pasta nicely. Claire wouldn't touch it because "rhubarb is overrated" (and she doesn't like asparagus either). Sami turned up his nose at the idea of rhubarb in a savory dish (and possibly rhubarb in general), but he tried it and decided he liked it: "It's like chutney." Yes, it is.

There were four of us at dinner and this small portion didn't get finished, so I can't really say the recipe was a raging success. But I thought it was a worthy experiment, and I enjoyed the leftovers (the sauce is excellent on roasted potatoes as well).

Crispy Roasted Cabbage

 So a couple of weeks ago, when I made this recipe, I went to the farmer's market to buy cabbage. It was a cold day and I felt bad about just buying cabbage, but then again, the money in my wallet was just enough to buy two cabbage halves. "How are you going to prepare it?" the vendor asked me. "Hot or cold?"
"Oh, hot. Roasted in the oven with olive oil. It's perfect for this winter weather!"
"Yeah, Germans like their cabbage warm, don't they?" he winked at me. I had to giggle inwardly. My French does come with rather a German accent,  I must say. And the fact that have brought this vendor some rather German pastries probably sealed the deal.

 But I didn't make this cabbage to go with German food--that night, I was going farther East to Poland. My friend Gabrielle and her daughter Pauline came over and we celebrated winter with eggplant caviar over Vollkornbrot, meat-filled pierogi topped with butter and caramelized onions, and this cabbage. And salad and dessert. The pierogi--which I would characterize as Polish potstickers--were a project (both Claire and Gabrielle helped me crank them out), but they were totally worth it.

And how was the cabbage? It was sweet and nutty, with the more bitter roasted edges playing off against the softness of the less-exposed areas. It complemented the pierogi really well, but I can think of many other meals I could (and will!) serve it with. I imagine that it would go well with a fried egg and sriracha sauce, just like Molly's cabbage, also a favorite. Or Aleppo pepper. Julia just ate it for lunch with ramen. The possibilities are endless, which is good, since winter is long here and there will be a lot of this cabbage in my future.

Courge au Gratin/Squash Casserole

This recipe comes to you via a French cookbook called "Cuisine sans souci," which Sami bought for me at a used cookbook store in Paris probably in the 80s or early 90s. It's a great basic cookbook, without a lot of frills--like most French cookbooks, it assumes you already know how to cook, so the recipes are short. I made the recipe more American by adding cheese.

I think this recipe was designed to be a side dish, but Sami was gone, so the girls and I turned it into a girly main dish. It really is filling enough to take a main role on the plate.

Julia loved this; Claire couldn't or wouldn't finish hers; I liked mine but thought the texture was a bit mushy. That's why I've upped the number of eggs from the original 2 to 3 with an optional 4.

Courge au gratin

2-1/2 lbs. winter squash (I used pumpkin)

Olive or vegetable oil

2 T. butter

2 T. flour

Salt, pepper, nutmeg

Dash Tabasco or other "spiciness enhancer"

1-2/3 c. milk

1 c. grated cheese (I used Comté; a gruyère or sharp cheddar would be nice)

3-4 eggs

2 slices bread, white or wheat

2 T. butter

about an ounce of Parmesan

Heat the oven to 400. Butter a 2-quart gratin or casserole dish and set aside. Cut the squash in half and scoop out the seeds (an ice cream scoop works well for this). Rub the cut side of the squash with the oil and put it on a foil- or parchment-lined baking sheet. Roast for about 45 minutes or until nice and soft. You can do this a day or so ahead if you want--just scoop out the squash into a bowl and refrigerate it until you're ready to proceed. If you're proceeding right away, keep the oven on. You can make the sauce while the squash cooks.

The cookbook actually called for "2 cups of thick Béchamel sauce," assuming you knew how to do that. If you do, proceed to make one with the butter, flour, seasonings and milk. Otherwise, get out a heavy smallish saucepan and melt the butter over medium heat until it stops foaming. Add the flour and seasonings and stir for about a minute before gradually whisking in the milk. Heat, whisking almost constantly, until the sauce is bubbly and thickened. Take off the heat and add the cheese, stirring until it melts. OK, now mash up the squash well with a fork, or put it through a sieve or a food mill, or purée it with a food processor (if you do this, make your bread crumbs first--see below). Mix the mashed squash with the cheesy béchamel. Whisk in the eggs one at a time and turn the mixture into the buttered casserole dish.

In a blender or food processor, put the bread (torn into pieces), the butter (cut into 4 pieces), and the Parmesan (broken into crumbles). Pulse that until you have lovely buttered bread crumbs. Sprinkle that on top of your squash mixture.

Put the casserole in the oven and bake for about 20-30 minutes or until the crumbs are nice and brown and the squash mixture has firmed up a bit. Let rest for about 10 minutes before digging in.

Fried Red Tomatoes

It’s early September, which means it’s time to go one last round with tomatoes. At the market this week, they had gigantic, gorgeous, but not too perfect tomatoes, and I brought 4 of them home. Two of them went into the tomato and blue cheese salad, and two of them got fried up as a side dish.
This recipe, which comes from Mollie Katzen’s Still Life with Menu, has some strengths and weaknesses. The strength is the taste: it reminded me of eggplant Parmesan, sauce and all. The weakness is the execution: it was really hard for me to bread and fry the tomato slices nicely. My solutions would be to be generous both with the “breading” (really just seasoned flour) and with the fat—I didn’t use enough to get a good sauté. Also you want to use good-tasting tomatoes that are still firm enough to hold up to all this. It is indeed a tricky thing: but worth trying out.

Gratinéed Tomatoes
4 medium (or 2 large) tomatoes
1/2 c. flour
4 T. grated Parmesan

1 T. dried tarragon
1 T. dried basil

1 t. dried thyme

Salt and pepper

2 T. butter

2 T. olive oil

1-2 cloves garlic, peeled and quartered

Core the tomatoes and slice them in 1/2 inch slices. In a pie plate, mix together the flour, Parmesan, tarragon, basil, thyme, and some salt and pepper (note: I cheated and used Herbes de Provence because I couldn't find some of my other herbs). In a large skillet, put the butter, olive oil, and garlic in to heat. When the butter has melted and the garlic has started sizzling, fish it out and put in a layer of tomatoes--don't crowd them. Ms. Katzen wants you to cook these 10 minutes per side, but that seems a bit excessive to me--I think 5 minutes a side is enough. Keep the heat regulated so that the slices are browning but not burning. Keep frying until all the tomatoes are cooked. Let them rest for at least 10 minutes because a cooked tomato is a very hot thing indeed. Enjoy--perhaps with some bacon and lettuce!