Springtime in August!

Oh call me a fool for writing about favas - that darling of springtimes everywhere! - in late August. But Chef Yum Yum is not one to be so coy; why, she herself ate favas this very weekend!

They taste like butter. They really do! They are a type of bean, and not butter. I know this because I have hulled them myself, in the actual springtime. People act as though this is sooo arduous, but if you have a leisurely afternoon and some good company, there is nothing like hulling a big bowl of favas between friends. Just boil them for a few minutes in roiling, salted water, plunge them into ice water to halt the cooking (and cool them), and slit the pods open (with a knife, or your fingernail), slide the outer hull off of each bean and ta-da! that was really not so hard.

In the non-springtime, I like to buy frozen fava beans at Whole Foods (Do not, by any means, consider this an endorsement of Whole Foods. I am currently very angry with Whole Foods, due to a nasty run-in with a bunch of cilantro from the wrong side of the tracks. Said cilantro, brown-spotted and pale, was grossly over-priced at $2.49 a bunch. I exaggerate by not a penny good people! Driving home, I could hardly fail to notice the Little Mexican Grocery on California and Milwaukee, shaking its boxy grocery store head at me in disappointment: "But Chef Yum Yum, my cilantro is three bunches for $1.00." It hardly seemed fair to point out to Little Mexican Grocery that its aisles smell a bit too much like Very Old Meat for my tastes, because not only is that cilantro cheap, it is beautiful. If it weren't for those favas, and perhaps the reasonably priced Nature's Gate Shampoo, Whole Foods and I would be over, OVER! ...but I digress.). They are of course not as good as fresh fava beans, but I promise, boiled for a moment in some sea salted water, they will never cease to amaze you (remember, they are a type of bean, not butter).

Here are two of my favorite ways to have favas:

"Springtime" Pasta with Favas and Other Much, Much Less Glamorous Things

This pasta is a friendly riff off of the Pasta Primavera in the Yellow Book, which I've made many, many times to the joy of tastebuds everywhere. That recipe is elaborate, but I recommend it because you'll feel accomplished and more intelligent when you're finished. This recipe is much more simple, for a night when you need some instant gratification.

12 oz. quality pasta (I most recently made this with walnut ravioli, but a more simple pasta would work just as well)
2 tbs. olive oil
1 1/2 c. fresh or frozen favas, hulled if fresh
1 large broccoli head, chopped into small florets (this is a time where I do not use the broccoli stems. Oh save them for another day!)
6 oz. cremini mushrooms, not-too-thinly, not-too-thickly sliced
2 garlic cloves
1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes
1 tsp. coarse sea salt
1/4 c. good quality parmigiano-reggiano, corasely grated
an enormous handful of coarsely chopped fresh basil
1 generous tbs. grated lemon rind

Bring a large pot of water generously salted water to boil (the salt really is key in bringing out the nuances of the vegetables). While the water is starting to get all worked up, heat olive oil in a medium skillet over medium heat. When the oil is hot, toss in the mushrooms and saute, allowing them to just start to release all their mushroomy juices. Turn off the heat, and just let the mushrooms sit there, patiently.

While the mushrooms are sauteeing, toss the favas and broccoli into the boiling water, letting them cook until just crisp-tender, about 2 minutes, but I think you should check before you take them out of the water. Fish them out with a slotted spoon (you'll need to keep the water boiling for your pasta, of course) and plunge them into a large bowl of icy water. Drain and tell them to wait, too. Use the mushrooms as an example if they're being too unruly.

Meanwhile cook your pasta according to package directions in the very same water that you boiled your vegetables in, reflecting on how the vegetable-flavored pasta water will really help to tie everything together in the final dish. Just a wee minute before your pasta is ready, bring the mushrooms back up to heat, adding the garlic, red pepper flakes and salt, and stirring until just fragrant. Add in the vegetables; you don't want to cook them, really (as they're already perfect!), but you do want them to have a suggestion of saute. Drain your pasta, reserving a cup of the paster water. Now toss together, everything, everything: the vegetables, the cheese, the pasta, the basil and the lemon rind, adding reserved pasta water as needed so that all things seem mingly - no sticking together forming cliques, but no pasta water sea of wallflowers, either.

Salad of Favas, Orange and Pink Peppercorns

Salad:
2 cups fresh or frozen fava beans, blanched in salted water
4 oranges, segmented and pith removed (I have a very good method for doing this, but had a hard time describing it without pictures. Which is why I am a grant writer, not a cookbook writer.)
1/4 cup fresh mint, julienned
a block of very firm, dry feta, which you will cut into four thin, delicate slices, one for each salad plate.

Dressing:
1 tbs. champagne vinegar (I love to use Trader Joe's Orange Muscat Champagne Vinegar for this)
1 tbs. orange juice, reserved from when you trim the oranges
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp. pink peppercorns
Sea salt, to taste

Coarsely grind the pink peppercorns with a mortar and pestle. In a small bowl, wisk together all dressing ingredients and pour over favas. Gently toss the favas with the dressing, then cover and let marinate in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.

Just before serving, toss the oranges with the mint. On four serving plates, as artfully as you can arrange the feta slice, favas and oranges. I like to keep the oranges and the favas in their own little piles, so I can have a taste of each now and then, or take one big bite of both as is my pleasure.

I first made this salad for a beautiful party for my beautiful friend Michelle's bridal shower. This is relatively unrelated, but in the absence of food-related pictures, at Michelle (and Jeff!)'s wedding a few weeks later, I took one of my favorite pictures of all time:


Maybe now Chef Yum Yum's nice boyfriend won't be quite so reluctant to give her pictures to put on her blog.

A good friend once told me, "You do not need any more cornmeal."

She took me by the shoulders, looked me straight in the eyes.

"Cassie. If you are ever at the grocery store and think, 'Yeah. I should buy cornmeal. Cornmeal!', just put the cornmeal down. And walk away."

I don't think that I cook with cornmeal very often, and I think this is the problem: when I do want to cook with cornmeal, I think, "Surely I don't have any cornmeal!" And thus when I was rearranging my pantry this past weekend, I discovered that I do, in fact, HAVE CORNMEAL.

I've been wanting to make Deborah Madison's black bean chili (from The Greens Cookbook) for quite some time, and I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to use up some of my Bob's Red Mill Stoneground Cornmeal. This is a very special cornmeal - it's much coarser, yes, but still somehow so soft, and it has these beautiful little flecks of red and blue from the corn hull, that helps me to understand how it came from real corn. I've used it to make the best polenta ever, really (I've been meaning to return to that cornmeal, and I'll write about it, too, but I think it will have to wait for cooler days). The cornbread I made to go with the chili (which was also excellent) was unusually savory, and just as moist as cornbread should be; we slathered on some honey butter with a sprinkle of cinnamon.

But the miracle happened on Monday night when I decided to show those cornbread leftovers a night out on the grill pan. I love my new Lodge cast iron grill pan; it's the sort of thing that words can't really touch upon, so it's probably best if you just buy one yourself and Taste The Wonderment. May I suggest a recipe?

Stonegound Cornbread Grilled in Honey and Cinnamon
(the recipe for the cornbread itself is culled from quite a few others, and this execution is my very own, so no credits to anyone but me, ha!)

Cornbread:
1 1/4 cup Bob's Red Mill Organic Cornmeal, Medium Grind
3/4 cup unbleached all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon sea salt
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup whole milk
1 egg
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted.

Preheat oven to 375. In a large bowl, whisk dry ingredients. In a smaller bowl, whisk together milk and egg, and then add to dry ingredients, followed by melted butter. Pour into a buttered bread pan, and bake for 20 minutes, or until done in the center. Allow to cool for at least 10 minutes on a rack before removing from the pan. If you're feeling fatigued from all that work, you could now eat about half the cornbread, but you'll need to save some for the rest of the recipe...

Honey Butter with Cinnamon:
4 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon cinnamon
(this could also be nice with some other touches to the butter, might I suggest nutmeg or lavender?)

Preheat a cast iron grill pan to medium-high heat. In a small pan, heat butter, honey and cinnamon until just melted. Remove from heat.

Slice cornbread into 1 1/2 inch slices, and then GENEROUSLY (because it's honey butter with cinnamon, silly, and everybody wants a lot of that action) brush one side of each piece of cornbread with melted butter.

Place cornbread slices, butter side down, on hot grill. Listen to that loving sizzle! The pan loves honey butter with cinnamon too! Generously brush unbuttered sides of cornbread with butter.

Now gently but deftly flip cornbread after about one and a half minutes, when the crunchy! glorious! crackly! grill marks have, like magic, appeared on bread, and continue to grill for another minute or so. You'll have to be delicate, or else you'll break your beautiful cornbread slices.

Like I did. Boo. But we still ate them all up!



No pictures yet. Apparently the lighting in my kitchen just won't do for proper photography.

le creuset! i think i've been hoodwinked!

My very nice boyfriend will hopefully not be upset with me if I let on that he's unemployed. It's only very temporary, a little sabbatical of sorts before the next exciting thing. One of the most glamorous parts of unemployment is that when you hear about something you don't know about, and if there's no immediately pressing need to look for employment, you can spend the time when you might otherwise be "working" doing "research" i.e. using wikipedia, prolifically. So as nice boyfriend contemplates his glamorous new Palo Alto kitchen (the largest room in his studio!) and all the necessary accoutrements, when I oh-so casually mentioned Le Creuset as the death of teflon everywhere, you can bet when I came home that afternoon, Mark was an expert on said cookware.

I first discovered Le Creuset when cooking at Jennifer and Casey's house ("They're very nice pans," Jennifer explained to me). Jennifer and Casey are my most grown-up friends, as they are married and have a house. AND live in Washington and cook almost only with organic products and every time I go to their house it is so SO yummy. Last time I went there I brought prosecco, and Jennifer just happened to have *homemade plum syrup* which we added to invent our very own plum belinis. Who has homemade plum syrup? Magical people, I tell you. Just as magical as the sparkles in prosecco make me feel, that's Jennifer and Casey's kitchen for you. So once I cooked so magically with Le Creuset, how could I go back?

Imagine my delight, then, when Mark mentioned to me a few days later that he'd like to take me for a spin in the Twin Cam to visit the Le Creuset outlet - part of the Chicago Premium Outlets, oh! - for a little enameled cast iron magic. "Just think," I thought, "Now I can use those pans when I visit Seattle and Palo Alto!" Much to my surprise, then, when we hop into the oh-so-air-conditionerless car on a day when our lovely city was under an extreme heat advisory and Mark casually mentions:

"I don't think I'm going to buy anything. I'm going to stick with non-enameled cast iron. I thought you might want to buy something."

But who am I kidding? I love my nice boyfriend and my nice kitchen. And I'd been looking forward to this trip all week. I was so coy about it, too - when I found the pot of my dreams, I had to do another lap around the outlet mall to pretend to "think it over" - but let's be clear, she'd already stolen my heart (I'll post a picture for you to oggle in a few days when Mark comes home - he's my photographer).

So she's green, of course. And deep - too deep for things like pancakes, of course, but just just deep enough for risotto. And she has that lovely, satisfying lid - I supsect I'll be able to make not a few sassy soups in the coming cold months. I've already done some lovely carmelized onion and mushroom quesedillas (with a splash of wine, because she's just that kind of a pan ladies and gentlemen).

Do you all know the beauty of Le Creuset, people? Because they work like non-stick, only they're not scary like Teflon. I can't remember why exactly Teflon is scary, but I'm pretty sure it's related to cancer, and I'm pretty sure it's pretty bad. Also - they're less finicky than your average cast iron pan - no need to season repeatedly, no fear of rust. And maybe you didn't know this - I didn't - but acidic flavors like tomatoes or wine can corrupt a regular cast iron pan. But not my little enameled love, oh no no no! She's like non-stick. But not scary like non-stick.

I made a risotto in her this past weekend. It was no good - although this was my own fault, and pan, I'm sorry that I let you down. I thought I could pull off a risotto-with-a-few-things-I-just-happen-to-have-on-hand and yes, yes, I've learned my lesson, thank you very much. I will never, NEVER not put cheese in risotto. EVER again. Unless it's an asian inspired risotto. Or that corn risotto Lauren made. Regardless - the FEEL of making this risotto was amazing - the sound when the wine hit the pan - so perfect! There was a good weight and resitance, too, stirring the rice as the broth began to evaporate, but before it was time to add my next ladleful. The reluctancy, I believe, of the rice to leave the pan - they love her too! I'm still getting the hang of her (she cooks on a much lower heat than I'm used to, but takes a bit longer to heat up), but this is no fickle fling my friends - she comes with a lifetime guarantee.

Stay tuned - I just found the special rice. Apparently, the nice Italians Mark recently met think arborio is *trash* and carnaroli is the true rice. We've found some, and we promise to be making some very special risotto in the coming week.