"Massaged" Kale Salad

 Massaged Kale Salad

Photographed in the nick of time! 

My but it's been a long time since I've blogged here! Seems I only get to blogging once Thanksgiving arrives then I get too busy over the remainder of the holidays! Not that I haven't wanted to post a recipe or two but with work travel and our trip to France this past summer, I've been pouring my time and energy more into Yelping reviews of places I've been rather than blogging about meals I've prepared. But then something happens that knocks one's socks off because it's such a simple recipe, uses an innovative technique, tastes delicious, and what do you know, it's also chock full of superfoods and is also incredibly healthy.

The epiphany happened at this past Saturday's farmers' market at 14th & U right in my own little neighborhood at my favorite farmers' market. A local blogger was giving out samples of a salad she'd made with ingredients from right there at the market that day, the name of which is intriguing enough on its own—massaged kale sounds so intimate—but then of course it also tasted like something you'd definitely want more of, probably going back until the serving dish is empty, because why not? One can't really overindulge in a superfood salad, right?

Looking at the kale salad, I thought the greens must have been blanched or something. They still looked curly but had gone from that ashy green of fresh kale to the forest green of flash cooked kale. Ah, but in actuality, there was no cooking involved whatsoever, unless you count toasting the nuts in the oven, which I didn't bother with myself, and I don’t know if the nuts used at the market had been toasted at home and brought with or just chopped up on the spot. The kale itself had gone from raw to looking cooked by being massaged with salt until the point that the salt wilted the kale enough to eliminate its raw toughness.

So the massaged kale salad looked appealing, but then I got hit with a wallop of deliciousness with the apples, nuts, dried fruit, and a touch of goat cheese. There’s something about cruciferous vegetables (anything in the cabbage family including kale, chard, broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, kohlrabi, et al) and their affinity with sweetness like that found in apples and dried fruit. In fact, one of the versions of cooked kale I like to make has the same ingredients—minus the goat cheese—and I believe that dish is Catalonian in origin. The flavor profile of the kale salad then was something familiar though its raw texture was completely new to me. I have to wonder if this recipe arose from the raw food movement actually. Hmmm…

There's also something inherently pleasurable for me in using my bare hands in the kitchen, whether it's kneading bread, making meatballs, or fluting a pie crust. Now I can add massaging kale to that mix of tactile kitchen pleasures and learning through the sense of touch when a certain food becomes "ready." The original recipe recommended a five minute massage, so I set my timer and got in there with my hands. Truthfully, the kale had reduced to one half to one third its original volume in about 2 minutes, but I kept going another thirty seconds because I couldn’t believe that raw kale had changed so dramatically in so little time. The salt really did its magic! I used two teaspoons of salt, which may have been too much and the reason the greens transformed so quickly. Perhaps with just a teaspoon of salt the massage would have taken longer, but I’ll find out next time.

Using salt for a quick pickle of raw vegetables is a technique I first experienced in a cooking class in Japan, where we made a carrot salad whose first step involved salting julienned carrots for a bit until the carrots would become soft. Readers of this blog may remember my favorite coleslaw recipe involves softening the cabbage with salt for up to four hours as one of the first steps after the shredding. Even making preserved lemons is another way of letting salt, one of the most ancient preservatives in the world, do its thing. So the concept of wilting the kale with salt instantly made sense to me. I just couldn’t believe how simple it actually was. Next time I’ll probably rinse the salted kale in my salad spinner to eliminate some of the lingering saltiness.

I was so struck with tasting this salad at the market that I decided on the spot to make it for lunch. Having forgotten to buy lettuce at the farmers’ market, I actually used the salad on a smoked turkey sandwich in place of the lettuce—it was “salad” after all. But then we finished off the rest of it because it was just that good. Fortunately I had the presence of mind to take a picture of my plate because I knew a blog posting would be in the offing.

Of course it’s the massage technique that is the star of this recipe. For that reason, one shouldn’t get caught up in the particular ingredients of the recipe in any case. You’re just making salad—or kale slaw if you will—so put in what you like and have on hand. Instead of dried cranberries as in the original recipe I used pomegranate seeds, since I had half of one left over from making a fruit salad earlier in the week. Any nut would make this salad sing, and already planning to serve for a dinner party I might make it with toasted pine nuts. Indeed with its colors, the salad seems like a perfect dish for Christmas with the greens, the dried cranberries (or pomegranate seeds in my case) plus the apple. I defy anyone not to love this dish that is both delicious AND healthy!

Massaged Kale Salad

With great thanks to A Bikeable Feast and Ibti for making this salad at the market and opening up a whole new world of cruciferous salads/slaws to me! Here is my heavily annotated recipe, written thusly to encourage you to make this salad with whatever you may have on hand that you might enjoy as part of this salad.

Ingredients for four servings

• a handful or two of nuts or seeds, toasted (optionally) and chopped if necessary (I used almonds and didn't toast; pine nuts, pumpkin seeds, or sunflower seeds would not need to be chopped obviously; flax seeds are too minuscule to use here)
  
• kale, tough stems removed, leaves chopped, rinsed, and dried somewhat (it's hard to say how much kale to use here. I usually buy kale and other greens tied and bunched together and I know that two bunches make 4 cooked servings. However, I started with one bunch for this recipe which filled my salad bowl before I started the massage. So the best measure might be "a decent sized salad bowl full of raw chopped kale.")
  
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt, a bit more if needed (two teaspoons was too much because a bit too much saltiness got into the kale, although the massage time was cut in half from Ibti's 5 minute recommendation. Then again that could have been because of my man hands.)
• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 -2 tablespoons vinegar of your choice (I used plum wine vinegar, but again, use what you like/have on hand. Apple cider or balsamic is recommended in the source recipe, but sherry or another wine vinegar, etc. would work just fine.
  
• half a medium red onion, diced or sliced thin (to take the sharpeness out of raw onion, cover the sliced onion for ten minutes with vinegar or with water and a teaspoon of sugar; rinse, then pat dry lightly. Onion flavor, yes, onion breath, no! Or just use a sweet onion like a vidalia.)
• One medium apple, cored and diced or cored, quartered and thinly sliced crosswise into quarter circles (kohlrabi or pear would make an apt substitution here, or go exotic and try a fall fruit like persimmon)
  
• a handful of dried cranberries (any dried fruit will do here: chopped apricots, raisins, dried cherries, etc.; I happened to use fresh pomegranate seeds actually)
• a few turns of fresh cracked pepper (you probably won't need any more salt)
  
• a few pieces of goat cheese (or chunks of feta or shavings of a hard cheese like parmagianno or manchego) to garnish
  

1. (Optional) Toast the nuts or seeds of your choice on a cookie sheet or in an oven proof skillet in a 350 degree oven for 5 to 8 minutes, longer if they're large pieces like walnuts. Set a timer but let your nose be your guide. If you can smell them, they're a minute or two from ready. I prefer toasting in the oven to the stovetop because they require less attention and you don't have to keep moving them around in the pan. Once when toasting pumpkin seeds they went past toasted and I thought I smelled bacon cooking before I realized the seeds were in the oven. They were still edible even on the dark side of toasted.
2. Sprinkle the teaspoon of salt over your kale and toss lightly to distribute. Again set your timer for 5 minutes and then get in there and massage the kale by squeezing the cut pieces to soften and allow the salt to wilt the kale. ( I wonder if the same effect could be achieved by drizzling the salt over the kale and then just let it sit on the counter for a few hours to macerate. Hmmm...) Very quickly the kale's color will change to a forest green, the pieces will soften, and the volume will reduce by more than half. Your salad bowl that was once heaping with greens will be reduced to a few large handfuls of greens. For me this transformation took about two minutes. But if you're reluctant to manhandle your greens or better yet, if you've got the kids helping you, let it go the for the full five!
3. Optional step: Rinse the wilted kale. Taste the wilted kale and if you think it's a tad salty, give the wilted greens a rinse in cold water and spin dry in your salad spinner. You do have one don't you? You really should if you want to dress any salad properly and shaking in a kitchen towel is far less effective. Because I used the two teaspoons of salt, there were two tablespoons of very salty liquid that I poured out of my salad bowl after the massage, so the rinse would have been a good idea had I not been so hungry and impatient.
   
4. Drizzle the olive oil and vinegar over the greens, add the remaining ingredients except for the cheese, and toss to combine and thoroughly dress every leaf of kale.
5. Serve on individual plates and garnish with the cheese of your choice, or leave the cheese out to make it vegan.
6. Devour with the full knowledge that not only are you eating something delicious, it's also damn good for you!
   

A Revisit to Summer's Quintessence: Tomato Tart with Corn, Basil, and Chevre

It was nearly a year ago that I blogged with profuse apologies about making a corn and tomato galette over the first weekend of November. I'd just discovered a blog with the full monty of beautiful food porn called Alexandra's Kitchen. Her photos are just so gorgeous that I just wanted to start making her recipes on the spot, they looked that delicious. While the result of my November undertaking was pretty damn good, I've been wanting to revisit the same recipe all summer long this year to atone for having made the dish in the fall when both tomatoes and corn were past their prime. This tart is for me the quintessence of summer's bounty, but I guess I'm just too busy going to the beach to actually make it in the summer!

Well, this past weekend was fall by the calendar yet sunny and warm during the day. And having bought on Saturday what is probably the last of the season's corn at the farmers market (this corn is not for eating off the cob but rather cooking in soups and in my favorite succotash that I will probably use as stuffing in some globe zucchini as a final good-bye to summer, but I digress) along with some pretty nice looking tomatoes, I knew Sunday morning had to be a revisit to this corn and tomato galette. (I know, late to the party again, but truth be told I was only able last year to make the galette in November because I'd bought corn and kept it past its prime in the fridge for two weeks! And while it was still good enough to cook and eat, this recipe deserves quality ingredients--and a nice side salad, and the warm sun on your cheek as you enjoy it with a bellini to capture the summer's best offerings.)

As per my usual of late in maintaining my ethos of "eating down the fridge," I was also inclined to make this recipe because I had two cheeses in my fridge I wanted to make good use of before they might go bad, in this case goat cheese and ricotta I'd purchased at the farmers market the previous week. Having made this recipe just once and blogged about the result, I'd thought that it had a layer of creme fraiche on its bottom that was then layered with sauteed corn and onion before being topped by the thick tomato slices. Only after I'd made the crust did I realize that my memory had failed me slightly in that I was combining the ingredients for Alexandra's quiche recipe, which has homemade creme fraiche, with the ingredients for the tomato galette, which has no cheese base but has lots of grated cheese either above or below the tomatoes. No worries! A quick whisk to combine the chevre and ricotta on hand with a dash or two of goat's milk and an egg, some dried thyme, and salt and pepper and I had a beautiful cheese bed upon which to lay my sauteed corn and onion and the sliced tomatoes.

Also, I keep referring to this recipe as a galette, i.e. a free form tart that is not baked in a special pan. The ingredients are laid in the middle of the rolled-out dough, leaving a two inch border that is then folded and pleated over the contents to form a rustic tart that is baked and sliced up almost like a thick piece of pizza. However, I wanted to make the dish in my rectangular tart pan which I'd bought for an asparagus recipe of Jamie Oliver's that is delicious but a bit too much work so I've only ever used the pan once before. Added bonus is that rolling the dough out into a rectangle vs. a circle is rather easy so getting the dough to fit into my tart pan was quite easy. Ironically, Alexandra's galette recipe was a redux of her original tart preparation, which she had first made in a round tart pan. What with the addition of my cheesy base layer, I guess I can call this recipe my own for my return trip, which I happily present below. Also, do yourself a favor and double the pastry recipe, which I foolishly did not do. I can guarantee that you'll want to make it again for this recipe or a quiche or even a peach pie!

Tomato Tart with Corn, Basil, and Chevre

Serves 4 to 6

Pastry recipe

Adapted from Alexandra Stafford's adaptation from Fine Cooking, August 2000

• 1-1/4 cups (5 oz.) all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup (1-1/2 oz.) fine yellow cornmeal [I used masa harina as I tend to buy medium rather than fine corn meal]
• 1 tsp. sugar
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 6 T. (3 oz.) unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces and chilled
• 3 T. olive oil
• 1/4 cup ice water

In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, cornmeal, sugar, and salt. Cut in the chilled butter using a stand mixer, a food processor, or a pastry blender until it’s evenly distributed but still in large, visible pieces. Add the olive oil and ice water a tablespoon at a time and mix until the dough begins to come together. It should still be separate crumbs mostly. Gather the dough with your hands and shape it into a disk. Wrap the disk in plastic and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. [Tip: It's best to make this dough the day before you need it because of the blind baking step which adds to the prep time. If impatient like me you can place the dough in the freezer for 20 minutes and then put in the fridge until ready to use.]

Filling

• 1 large and 2 small to medium ripe tomatoes (about 1 pound total) cut into 1/3-inch slices, lightly salted and draining on paper towels as you go about preparing the onions and corn
• 2 Tbs. olive oil
• 1 large red onion, roughly chopped
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• Kernels from 2 ears of corn (generous 1 cup) [Tip: to cut corn off the cob without the kernels flying everywhere, hold the ear upright on your cutting board, but start cutting halfway down the ear, rotating to remove all the corn from one half of the ear; turn the ear over and repeat for the half you were holding. Voila! Corn on the cutting board (mostly) and not on your counter, plus your fingertips are well away from your knife blade!]
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 bunch basil coarsely chopped to yield about 1/2 cup
• 8 oz. soft cheese such as goat cheese or ricotta
• 2 -3 Tbs. milk
• 2 tsp. chopped fresh thyme or 1 tsp. dried
• 1 egg
• salt and pepper to taste.
• 1 recipe cornmeal pastry (see above)
• 1/4 cup grated semi-hard or hard cheese, such as manchego or parmesan
• Garnish of your choice: chopped parsley, chives, basil or scallion, optional

Adjust an oven rack to the center position and heat the oven to 375°F.
Prep the onions and corn: Heat the olive oil in a large sauté pan, over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring frequently, until softened but not browned, about 10 min. Season with salt and pepper. Add the corn and cook another 3 minutes. Remove from the heat and mix in the garlic and chopped basil, letting the mixture cool in the pan.
Blind bake the tart shell: Meanwhile, if it's been long enough to firm up the dough, roll it out on a floured surface until big enough to fit your tart pan. Transfer the pastry to your tart pan and fit it into the sides without stretching. Trim off any excess and if necessary patch the dough where needed by moistening the edge with water and fitting the extra piece into the bare spot. Prick the bottom all over with a fork and lay a piece of parchment paper larger than the tart pan into the bottom. Fill the parchment paper with pie weights (I use about a pound of beans and rice reserved for this purpose) and bake in the oven for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes remove the parchment and pie weights to a bowl and let cool for use another day. Return the tart to the oven for another 10 minutes until it becomes golden brown. Let cool slightly. [Tart crust can be prepared a day in advance. Wrap the tart pan in plastic wrap once cool and store at room temperature.]
Prep the chevre base layer: Whisk together the goat cheese, egg, thyme, salt and pepper with 2 tablespoons of the milk until a smooth spreadable consistency. If too thick, add some milk a little bit at at a time until the mixture is spreadable like cake frosting. Spread the cheese mixture into the bottom of the slightly cooled tart crust using a rubber spatula or the back of a spoon. Layer the onion and corn mixture on top. Pat the tomato slices dry with a paper towel and arrange decoratively on top of the corn mixture. Fit the tomatoes snugly without overlapping as they will shrink as the tart bakes. Sprinkle or grate some parmesan or other cheese over the top of the tomatoes.
Bake and serve: Bake until the crust has browned and the tomatoes have roasted and shriveled slightly, 35 to 45 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for 10 minutes. Slice the tart and serve with the herb or scallion garnish of your choice (which I forgot to do as you see in the picture below cuz I was so eager to taste this bad boy).

A Good-bye to Summer's Bounty: Lynn Alley's Three Sisters Stew

These three sisters--corn, beans, and squash--really rock it when they get together! I love food names like this that tell a bit of a story, like moros y cristianos for Cuban black beans and rice. The three sisters were often grown as a trio by Native Americans in parts of North America. Corn is the eldest sister who allows the beans to climb while the broad leaves of squash shade the soil, keeping it moist and blocking weeds from seeing the sun.

It was last fall, perhaps after a visit to the Smithsonian's Museum of the American Indian, that I first heard of the three sisters. The cafeteria in this museum is probably the best--and most expensive--on the National Mall (the National Gallery of Art also has good eats IMHO) and features regional dishes inspired by the original inhabitants of the Americas. Was it a three sisters casserole that caught my eye that day? I can't quite remember, but I began bookmarking recipes last October, mindful that I would be revisiting this dish in my future.

The recipes that I found, however, seemed too hybrid Italian. One used a sage pesto with pine nuts and another was a pasta casserole for two. But a couple of days ago a co-worker and I were discussing his love of home cooked beans from scratch vs. the can. There's really no debate. Sure it's easy to open a can and no pantry should be without a few cans of beans like chickpeas, cannelinis, and/or black beans. But cooking beans oneself from dried beans is laughably simple, not to mention healthy and affordable. So he got me thinking that I too should be economizing and making beans from scratch, especially because it can all be done in the slow cooker while I'm out for the day.

Serendipitously I found a recipe in The Gourmet Slow Cooker Volume II for a three sisters stew, full of New World ingredients (i.e. Mexican) only. The other thing I liked about this recipe is that Lynn doesn't recommend soaking the beans overnight nor doing the quick soak (bring beans to a boil for a couple minutes then turn off the heat and let sit for an hour or two). While it's not a big deal to remember a day ahead that tomorrow is bean cooking day, I may not know until I've gotten up in the morning that I want beans for dinner that night so the soaking window might be closed.

There is debate among the culinary cognoscenti about the necessity of soaking anyway. Any authentic Mexican cookbook will not recommend the soak. Recipes I've seen from Europe as well as conventional wisdom usually insist on the soak. Rick Bayless scoffs at the idea and he's got the whole of Mexico to back him up. Without the soak, the beans may take longer to cook, but cooking beans isn't like cooking pasta in that the cooking time may vary widely depending on the beans themselves and how old they are anyway (older beans may take longer to come to doneness). I wasn't concerned though because I put the beans in my six quart slow cooker at 8:00 in the morning and knew that I wouldn't be home until after 6:00 so ten hours had to be long enough and it was.

Perhaps my beans were a bit overdone because some of them had given up a lot of starch and really thickened the stew beautifully IMO, but I could still see whole beans. That might also have occurred because I used both black beans and pink beans and probably different types of beans cook at different paces. If I were making a dish where most beans had to be kept whole, the super long cook might have been an issue, but that didn't matter for making a stew. In fact I was tempted to add a chopped up square of baking chocolate a la Tyler Florence to add even more silkiness, but refrained since I was interested in trying the dish as written since it was my first time preparing.

A lot of Amazon reviews for Lynn's slow cooker recipes criticize her for adding steps of grinding spices or browning meat or sauteing onions and garlic on the stove top. When slow cookers first became popular in the 1970s in the heyday of "convenience cooking" (when I was growing up incidentally), the "dump in all your ingredients in the morning and come home to your delicious dinner at the end of the day" was the selling point and this mentality has persisted to this day in some quarters. However, the slow cooker is not a magical cooking vessel. The end result depends on the quality of your ingredients and the steps taken to ensure a delicious result. This may often necessitate doing part of the preparation on top of the stove. Anyone who's made chili in a slow cooker is probably used to this idea as ground meat always has to be browned before adding. And if you're using preground spices, I'd just use the same amount as for whole. Whenever I measure whole seeds, I never level so a rounded teaspoon of whole seeds approximates closely enough a level measure of the same spice in my experience.

Now I'm going to sound like a hypocrite because I did not follow my own recommendation! I did not brown the onion at all, but just added it right in with the beans and chicken stock in the first step. The Three Sisters Stew is nearly a dish that follows the 1970s ethos of dump it all in and come home to a delicious meal. This was a move of pure laziness as I was trying to get to work and hadn't given myself enough time to saute the onion. I can't say that the dish suffered at all, but I'll attribute half of that to the quality of my spices and other ingredients from the farmers market. But browning meat? That is a step that should never be omitted.

Finally, this recipe defied other bean hegemony in addition to the no soak. I added marinara sauce to the beans from the beginning. Now I'd always heard that cooking beans in acidic liquid keeps them from reaching doneness, so I was skeptical of cooking the beans with a tomato based sauce, but no worries, mate! Perhaps ten hours was enough to overcome the situation, perhaps it was never a problem to begin with!

Three Sisters Stew
Adapted from Lynn Alley’s The Gourmet Slow Cooker Volume II: Regional Comfort-Food Classics
Makes 4 to 6 servings

• 2 cups dried pinto, Anasazi or red beans, rinsed [I used a half pound each of black and pink beans]
• 8 cups water or stock [I used chicken stock]
• 1 cup tomato or marinara sauce
• 1 tablespoon olive or corn oil
• 1 yellow onion, chopped
• 1 tablespoon canned chili in adobo sauce, with sauce
• 1 poblano chili, seeded and chopped [I used two poblanos]
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped [I used 5 cloves of roasted garlic that I happened to have on hand]
• 1 pound chorizo sausage, sliced [I used 12 ounces of chicken and turkey habanero sausage, obviously not included for a vegetarian stew]
• 1 tablespoon cumin seeds, crushed [next time I'll toast the spices before crushing]
• 1 tablespoon coriander seeds, crushed
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 3 ears corn, cut into 2-inch lengths [I trimmed the kernels off the cob instead because it's easier to eat that way]
• 2 zucchini squash, sliced [1 pound of trimmed mini patty pan squash would do nicely here as they hold their shape after prolonged cooking]
• 1 cup beer
• Salt and pepper to taste
  
• chopped cilantro, optional
• sour cream, optional
  

Combine beans, water and tomato sauce in the slow cooker. Heat oil in large saute pan over medium-high. Saute onion for about 10 minutes, until lightly browned. [I’m a total hypocrite for not doing this step but I was pressed for time!] Transfer to the slow cooker; add chilis and garlic. [Next time I might just add the whole sausages at this step to let them steep in the stew, but maybe they would add too much salt and/or acidity] Cover and cook on low 6 to 8 hours, until the beans are very tender.

Brown chorizo in a saute pan over medium-high heat, 10 to 15 minutes. Drain. Add the chorizo, cumin, coriander, chili powder, corn, zucchini and beer to the cooker and continue cooking for 1 hour, until the zucchini is tender and the corn is cooked. Season to taste with salt. Serve hot, garnished with cilantro and sour cream.

Mark Bittman's Farfalle (or Penne) with Gorgonzola and Cherry Tomatoes

An Italian-American friend of my sister schooled me at Christmas dinner a few years ago: Italians don't eat pasta. Rather than call a dish "pasta with spring vegetables" or "pasta with lemon shrimp" the dish should be identified by the type of noodle, i.e. "farfalle with spring vegetables" or "linguine with lemon shrimp." My brother also works with someone who went off on him when my brother described some dish as "pasta with broccoli" and his co-worker shouted at him, "It's cavatappi with broccoli!" Point taken then! I gladly defer to my Italian-American fellow citizens of New Jersey (I've seen the Real Housewives of NJ)! I think most folks get this with the names of many familiar dishes like linguine with clam sauce, baked ziti, and lasagne. In each of these dishes the noodle defines the dish as much as what accompanies. And besides "pasta" is just Italian for "dough" and that is not what you are making and serving. You're serving a dish that uses a particular noodle that should be named.

Mark Bittman's Farfalle with Gorgonzola and Cherry Tomatoes is an easy dish that can be made winter or summer. Often cherry or grape tomatoes are the only acceptable choice in the winter when other fresh tomatoes are only a summer memory. At the height of summer there are so many colors and varieties of cherry tomatoes that this dish seems perfect for a quick summer supper. As with most recipes, the ingredients can be readily substituted depending on what you may have on hand (feta for the Gorgonzola, watercress or spinach for the arugula, milk for the cream and so on). There's certainly no reason to make this dish the same way twice if you don't want to!

Penne with Gorgonzola and Cherry Tomatoes
Adapted from Mark Bittman's recipe in the New York Times, January 24, 2007
TOTAL TIME 30 minutes
YIELD 6 to 8 servings [or 4 servings if using only 8 ounces of farfalle]

Ingredients

• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 cup half-and-half, cream or milk [I used nonfat milk and added some butter]
  
• 1 cup crumbled Gorgonzola or other good blue cheese
• 1 pound farfalle or other pasta [I used only a half pound of penne]
  
• 2 cups arugula trimmed of very thick stems, washed, dried and chopped [I used a bunch of watercress, including the stems]
  
• 1 cup cherry or grape tomatoes, cut in half [I used cherry tomatoes from my garden]
  
• Freshly grated Parmesan to taste, optional

Preparation

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and salt it. In a small saucepan gently warm the half-and-half and Gorgonzola just until cheese melts a bit and mixture becomes thick; chunky is O.K. [If using watercress as I did, you might want to stir it into the cheese sauce to soften the stems a bit. Or not; nothing wrong with a bit of crunch.]
   
2. When water boils, cook pasta until it is just tender but not mushy. Drain and return to pot over low heat.
3. Stir in Gorgonzola sauce along with arugula, tomatoes and a healthy dose of black pepper. Stir to combine, taste and add salt, if necessary, then serve immediately, with grated Parmesan if you like.

Chicken alla Parmagiana My Way

I love chicken parmesan but I never order the gooey, overly cheesy versions found at most restaurants since coming up with this version. I made this last night with some really delicious creamy mozzarella, but I missed the smoked mozzarella that I usually favor here. My recipe uses all the typical components but instead of frying the breaded chicken breasts in oil, I crisp up the breadcrumbs by broiling the breaded chicken breasts for a few minutes, then topping with the sauce and the cheese and putting it back under the broiler. The result is a much lighter variation of the original with all of the crunch. I've grown to prefer the meaty almost bacon like flavor of smoke mozzarella in most situations that call for mozzarella since discovering a purveryor at my farmers market, but any kind of mozzarella will do, whether artisanal or pre-shredded from the bag.

This is one of those rare recipes of my own that I posted to Epicurious in my own recipe box. When I first started making this I sort of enjoyed bashing the heck out of those breasts using a frying pan. Now I just butterfly them open which is a lot less hassle.

Chicken alla Parmagiana
Serves 4

2 chicken breast halves, about 12 ounces each
salt and pepper
1 cup flour
2 eggs beaten with 1 tablespoon water or milk
1 1/2 to 2 cups bread crumbs or panko bread crumbs seasoned with 1 tablespoon dried thyme or oregano
2-3 tablespoons of olive oil, optional
2 cups of your favorite pasta sauce (homemade is ideal)
4 ounces smoked mozzarella, cut into 6 to 8 slices

grated parmesan, optional
chopped parsley, optional

First, pound out the chicken breasts to a half inch thickness. I place the chicken breasts in a zip top bag or between to sheets of plastic wrap and whack at it with a small fying pan. Pounding out chicken breasts can be enormously stress reducing but don't be too overzealous as you want to keep the breast in one piece. Alternatively carefully butterfly the breast halves by slicing them in half: place your hand on top of the breast, place the knife blade parallel to the cutting board and carefully slice into the breast but not all the way through. Open the breast like a book and you've got a butterflied breast, as demoed here on Youtube.

Place an oven rack at the second level down from your broiler element (assuming you've got an oven like mine with the broiler element in the top of the oven) and turn on the broiler. Line a large baking sheet with foil and smear with a thin film of olive oil if you feel like it. Season each chicken breast generously on both sides with salt and pepper. Set up your breading station in three large flat bowls or baking dishes: first flour, then the egg, and finally the bread or panko crumbs. Drizzle a tablespoon or so of olive oil over the bread crumbs and mix in before dredging. This will help the bread crumbs to crisp up nicely. Dredge the flattened chicken breast in flour on both sides and shake off the excess. Next, coat the same piece in the egg wash, letting the excess drip off. Finally, lay it in the bread crumbs. Use your fingers to spread bread crumbs on top of the chicken breast, pressing down to make sure the crumbs stick and that the breast is completely coated. Place on the baking sheet and repeat with the other flattened chicken breast. Drizzle the top of the chicken breast lighltly with olive oil if desired.

Broil the two breasts for five minutes, keeping an eye on them to make sure they brown but do not burn! Turn them over and broil for another three minutes on the second side. Remove from the oven.

Spoon about 1 cup of sauce all over each chicken breast and lay the slices of mozzarella on top of the sauce. Place the chicken back under the broiler for another two to three minutes until the sauce is heated and the cheese is melted and browned slightly. Remove from the oven and move the chicken to a cutting board. Cut each piece in half, garnish with grated parmesan and parsley if using and serve immediately with a side of spaghetti, sauteed broccoli rabe, and a glass of chianti! A red checkered tablecloth is also optional. Buon Appetito!