Put your Heart (of Palm) Into It.

I get a lot of food magazines. I actually get way too many food magazines. The problem, the reason why I say way too many, is that I insist on reading every word and staring at every detail of every photograph – and all in one sitting. Maybe everyone does that, but I feel like magazines, except for the literary ones, are more often enjoyed in a leaf-through-it-casually-and-pick-it-up-and-down-over-time sort of way. But me, once I pick it up and open the cover, I'm in it to win it until I flip that very last page. Kind of like me and a bag of chips.

Oh, and that's not all. Not by a long shot. I save them. I keep them all in a pile for a larger project. And once the pile reaches a certain height, about two or three times a year, I go back through every single page of every single magazine and rip out the pages that have recipes I want to play with and images that inspire me. After I tear them all out, I sort through them and file them into binders assigned to different categories; soups, breakfast, vegetables, poultry, holidays, and so on. The photographic inspired pages go into their own binder. It's like my own private Pinterest.

I can understand why Fred always tells me, 'It must be exhausting to be you'.

So now you see why perhaps I ought to cut back on the magazines.

And now that I'm moving across the country in less than two months (!), this all seems really idiotic. Especially considering if I ever want to find one of the recipes I can just Google them. But I can't stop myself. It's as if I am compelled. Which is scary since I just saw The Conjuring last weekend.

But, fairly often, I do refer to my binders of recipes to get dinner ideas. And just as often I refer to my binder of inspirational photos as a reference of how I'd like to visually capture said dinners.

So as I was poking around in the cupboard the other day I found a jar of hearts of palm. I honestly do not recall buying them and have no idea how long they had been living with me. I've always been fond of hearts of palm, but it totally reminds me of the early nineties. It lives in my memories with sun dried tomatoes, tuna tartare with mango, Dippin' Dots and Zima. I even vaguely recall a rumor going around that hearts of palm was bad for the world, kind of like the whole shrimp thing right now.

As I was holding the jar of hearts of palm and noodling down memory lane, reminiscing about white zin and baked brie, I remembered that very recently I saved and filed away a recipe for what else, hearts of palm. And I just so happened to have most of the ingredients. And what I did not have was easy to change out with other things, to make it my own. That's just kismet.

Heart of palm is an interesting thing. It is a vegetable. It's harvested from the inner core of certain palm trees. And yes, harvesting of many non-cultivated palms results in palm tree death. However, other palm species are clonal and moderate harvesting will not kill the entire clonal palm. Moreover, an alternative to wild hearts of palm are palm varieties which have undergone a process of adaptation to become a domesticated farm species. This variety is the most widely used for canning. And this very farmed variety is what we are buying at the market. But since harvesting is still a labor intensive task, palm hearts are regarded as a delicacy.

Move over foie gras, here comes something leaner?

Heart of palm does actually seem like a delicacy. It is delicate. It's soft in color and texture and has a subtle, muted taste. A taste that could be described as, well, delicate. Though I like to snack on one or two, straight up, no chaser, you will almost always find them in salads.

And here is no different.

I love this salad. It is bright and fresh and zippy. It's colorful and covers the entire texture spectrum, from super soft all the way over to super crunchy with everything in between. The original recipe called for parsley where I used cilantro. But I think any number of fresh herbs could and should be folded in as well; basil chives, shiso, mint, you name it. 

I will tell you now that once the hearts of palm jumped into that salad, they also jumped into a new memory category. One that is very much in the present. It was so simple to make and so fun to eat, that I bet once you try it, this is one of those recipes that will end up in your binder as well.

Hearts of Palm, Heirloom Tomato and Avocado Salad

Serves 2-4

1 cup mixed color heirloom tomatoes, chopped into ½-inch pieces

1/2 small sweet onion, cut into thin slivers

1 14-ounce cans hearts of palm, drained and sliced 1/2 inch thick

1 avocado, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

1/4 cup coarsely chopped cilantro

1/2 teaspoon finely grated lime zest

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice

2 tablespoons mayonnaise

2 tablespoons canola oil

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

In a medium bowl, toss the tomatoes with the onion slivers, hearts of palm, avocado and chopped cilantro. In a small bowl, whisk the lime zest and lime juice with the mayonnaise and oil; season the dressing with salt and pepper. Pour the dressing over the salad, toss gently and serve right away.

Printable recipe.

One year ago: Zucchini Fries with Poblano Cream

Two years ago: Bourbon-Vanilla Bean Banana Bread with Candied Walnuts

Three years ago: Classic Southern Deviled Eggs

Four years ago: Baked Tomatoes with Goat Cheese, Fresh Herbs & Hazelnut Breadcrumbs

Never be a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic...

June is here. Which means Summer is this close. Which also means my birthday is coming up*. I like June. June is usually warm enough to comfortably wear tank tops and Summer dresses, even in the evening, without the fear of needing another layer. But June is also not yet the dog days of summer, where one feels the need to hop from one air conditioned space to the next, without ever really being exposed to the outside. June is green, not brown. June is not anticipatory and hopeful, like April and May, or exhausted and wilted like August. Rather, June is confident, pert and happy. June does cartwheels. And June is pleased as punch to be right where it is. In June.

I also think June likes picnics. Don't you think? Not too hot, not too cold, not too mosquito-y, not too humid, not too smoggy. Even Goldilocks would concur, it's just right. And clearly I'm not the only one that feels this way. NPRjust had a story about picnicking through the ages last week, I'm seeing picnic-themed foods and the like all over Pinterest, one of my peers had a blurb about gourmet picnics in the most recent Westways, Lucques is having their 'Tennessee Indoor Picnic' in a couple of weeks and I recall last year, exactly at this time, Splendid Table aired a piece about the most perfect, most neat-est, most conceptual picnic sandwich I've ever heard of. This sandwich originated, and is a specialty, in the South of France – Nice, to be exact. It is sold in every bakery and market there. This sandwich is the pan bagnat. Fred and I even made a couple of them to take on our weekend trip to the Santa Ynez Valley for my birthday last year. I have not made one since, but I have never forgotten about the pan bagnat.

It's hard to say which part of the pan bagnat made it so memorable. But if pressed (like the sandwich), I'd have to say it was Melissa Clark's story about it in that Splendid Table piece. Yes, it was an impressive sandwich, but Clark's story was really special. She spoke about being a seven year-old, on family vacations in the South of France. About the daily picnics they would have at the beach, and how her mom would make the most amazing sandwiches. It sounded like a sandwich which originated with the base ingredients of a tuna nicoise salad, but turned into an everything-but-the-kitchen sink sandwich that was stuffed full of ingredients a mile high. Her mom would have she and her sister sit on the wrapped sandwiches, in the car, all the way to the beach so that it would end up with all the salties and juicies, the burst capers, anchovies crammed into a paste, tuna, oil, everything perfectly married in addition to then being flat enough to eat properly.

It just sounded so romantic to me. I always do love a process, a story. And this one comes with the most perfect picnic sandwich I could possibly imagine. One with everything under the sun in it. That sandwich is a picnic.

So last weekend, Fred and I, for the second time, exactly a year apart, made our pan bagnats again and had ourselves a picnic. Since we were not driving to wine country and we didn't have a seven year-old on hand, we opted to weigh our sandwiches down with our biggest, heaviest cast-iron topped with a full tea kettle. Our Sunday picnic menu was as follows:

Pan Bagnat

Dill pickle spears

Potato salad with peperoncini & bacon

Dolmas

Cherries

Fresh squeezed limeade

All of the food ended up being perfect for a picnic. But the pan bagnat was undoubtedly the star. Pan bagnat is literally translated as ' bathed bread' or 'wet bread', and that is an accurate description. When it's ready to eat, the bread has absorbed a lot of the liquid from the filling and all of the ingredients are pressed to form a tight strata with all of those textures and flavors in a perfect union. This sandwich was also a favorite of Julia Child and Jacques Pepîn. You can even watch them make one here. I have to say, I bet the pan bagnat would be a sandwich to make Dagwoodhimself quite proud.

*I will be accepting birthday gifts all through June. Inquire within for suggestions and ideas.

Pan Bagnat

Makes one big-ass sandwich that can feeds at least 2

Ingredients

3 anchovy fillets, minced

1 tablespoon capers, chopped

1 garlic clove, minced

1 1/2 teaspoon red wine vinegar

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

Pinch of salt and freshly ground pepper

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 baguette

1/2 regular cucumber

1 medium-size, ripe tomato, sliced

¾ roasted red pepper

½ avocado, sliced

½ cup arugula

1/2 small red onion, sliced

1 jar (8 oz) tuna packed in olive oil, drained

8 large basil leaves

4 tablespoons chopped Kalamata olives, pitted

1 hard-cooked egg, peeled and thinly sliced.




Instructions

In a small bowl, whisk together the anchovies, garlic, vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper. Slowly drizzle in oil, whisking constantly until emulsified.

Coarsely chop the olives and capers, then combine in a small bowl with the minced garlic and set aside.

Slice baguette in half lengthwise, pull out some soft interior crumb to form a cavity.

Peel cucumber & halve lengthwise, and scoop out seeds from one half. Thinly slice seedless half. Add sliced cucumber to vinaigrette and toss well.

Fill the bottom part of the baguette with the olive mixture, spreading it evenly across the hollowed-out baguette, then spread half the cucumbers on top. Next up, spread the tuna over that. Top with tomato and onion slices, then with pepper, arugula, avocado, basil, olives & egg slices. Top egg with remaining cucumbers and vinaigrette. Cover with second bread half and firmly press sandwich together.

Wrap sandwich tightly in foil, waxed paper or plastic wrap, then place in a plastic bag. Put sandwich under a weight such as a cast-iron frying pan topped with a filled kettle, or have a child about 7 years old sit on it. Weight sandwich for 7 to 10 minutes, then flip and weight it for another 7 to 10 minutes (or as long as you can get the child to sit still). Unwrap, slice and serve immediately, or keep it wrapped for up to 8 hours before serving.

Printable recipe.

One year ago: Fresh Mint & Chip Ice Cream

Two years ago: Yerp: Part 2 - An Evening in Gruissan.

Three years ago: Fresh Strawberries, Chocolate Mint & Chantilly cream with Cornmeal Shortcakes

Pucker Up.

I've been thinking about the handful of fruits and vegetables that we use in cooking but would never just pop into our mouths, fresh. I mean to say, foods that require a significant transformation for them to be edible, like olives, rhubarb and cranberries. Olives have to be fermented or cured, rhubarb has toxic leaves and is almost always macerated then baked. And cranberries, have you ever tried to just eat a cranberry? Not pleasant. And acorns. It has never even occurred to me to eat an acorn. Yet, it is a nut. Squirrels eat acorns. And throughout history acorns have been used, ground up to make grain flours and even used as a coffee substitute for soldiers in both the Civil War and World War II.

It fascinates me to no end to think of the trajectory of how we, the people, figured out how to make these things (and all things) edible. 'Well, Hyram there died when he ate that acorn. So let's try and soak it in another poisonous substance, LYE, and give it another go. Yes? Rodney's okay? Alright, good to hear because this would make a lovely flour with which to create a noodle.'

Rhubarb. It comes into season in the Spring and everyone gets all aflutter about it. I'd say about ninety percent of the time you'll find rhubarb paired with strawberries and baked into a pie or a crumble. It's bright, tart and guaranteed to make you pucker up. My favorite bit of information I stumbled across in my rhubarb research: In British theatre and early radio drama, the words "rhubarb rhubarb" were repeated for the effect of unintelligible conversation in the background. This usage lent its title to the 1969 film Rhubarb and its 1980 remake Rhubarb Rhubarb. I guess it's just about time for someone to make Rhubarb, Rhubarb, Rhubarb.

I haven't played with much rhubarb in my day. I could probably count on one hand, the number of times I've purchased any. And so, last time I found myself staring at produce at the market looking for inspiration, I grabbed a handful of those awkward, glossy, orangey, reddish-pinkish stalks and got to thinking. Even though I entertained some compelling arguments to go the savory route, which is generally more apropos for me, I knew pretty quickly that I was going to go sweet.

But a muted, subtle sweet.

Time to bake.

Though I am no cake connoisseur, I have always really loved coffee cakes and pound cakes. They are less cake-like and more akin to very sweet breads (not sweetbreads, mind you – wildly different things). Interestingly, both are also Southern. To this day, I would eat the Tasty Cake version of a coffee cake or the Sarah Lee version of a pound cake in a hot minute. The most beguiling part of coffee cake is the crumb on top. Those brown sugary, buttery grape-sized chunks on top of the cake that are toothachingly, cloyingly sweet – that almost requires a swallow of coffee to allay the sweetness – that's my jam.

And what better an element to cut that sweetness than the tartness of rhubarb?

I was right. When my cake cooled, we all dug in. The rhubarb, which had been macerated prior to baking, was mellow and gently sweet, but maintained it's pert zing, adding an ideal offset to the sugar bomb crumby coffee cake. Well, that and a cup of hot coffee.

And no one even had to die in the process. But Hyram, we certainly do thank you.

Rhubarb Crumb Coffee Cake

Serves 8

For the rhubarb filling:


1/2 pound rhubarb, trimmed


1/4 cup sugar


2 teaspoons cornstarch


1/2 teaspoon fresh, grated ginger

For the crumbs:


1/3 cup dark brown sugar


1/3 cup granulated sugar


1 teaspoon ground cinnamon


1/2 teaspoon fresh, grated ginger


1/8 teaspoon salt


1/2 cup (1 stick or 4 ounces) butter, melted


1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

For the cake:


1/3 cup plain greek yogurt


1 large egg


1 large egg yolk


2 teaspoons vanilla extract


1 cup all-purpose flour


1/2 cup sugar


1/2 teaspoon baking soda


1/2 teaspoon baking powder


1/4 teaspoon salt


6 tablespoons softened butter, cut into 8 pieces.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease an 8-inch baking pan. For filling, slice rhubarb 1/2 inch thick and toss with sugar, cornstarch and ginger. Set aside.

To make crumbs, in a large bowl, whisk sugars, spices and salt into melted butter until smooth. Then, add flour with a spatula or wooden spoon. It will look and feel like a solid dough. Leave it pressed together in the bottom of the bowl and set aside.

To prepare cake, in a small bowl, stir together the yogurt, egg, egg yolk and vanilla. Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, mix together flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add butter and a spoonful of sour cream mixture and mix on medium speed until flour is moistened. Increase speed and beat for 30 seconds. Add remaining sour cream mixture in two batches, beating for 20 seconds after each addition, and scraping down the sides of bowl with a spatula. Scoop out about 1/2 cup batter and set aside.

Scrape remaining batter into prepared pan. Spoon rhubarb over batter. Dollop set-aside batter over rhubarb; it does not have to be even.

Using your fingers, break topping mixture into big crumbs, about 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch in size. They do not have to be uniform, but make sure most are around that size. Sprinkle over cake. Bake cake until a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean of batter (it might be moist from rhubarb), 45 to 55 minutes. Cool completely before serving.

Printable recipe.

One year ago: Classic Shad Roe with Bacon & Fresh Herbs

Two years ago: Yerp: Part 1 (of many).

Three years ago: Sautéed Baby Artichokes with Olive Oil, Garlic & Lemon