Roasted Asparagus with Yogurt Dressing

If you just skim the last few entries on this blog, you may very well assume that we eat nothing but dessert around here.  Truth is, my favorite summer meals involve freshly baked breads, creamy cheeses, and whatever seasonal vegetable the garden has to offer.  

It's been summer out here in the East Bay for quite some time (and then winter again quite suddenly, but what can you do?), so asparagus seems a little passe.  It comes in our CSA box every week in April and May, and I scoop up even more bundles of the thin, green stalks everywhere I see them.  Asparagus is a celebration of spring, and by June, it doesn't quite belong on our table anymore.  We wait patiently for tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, and corn.  We watch the sunset past eight and wake up to a sun-filled room at six, we go to the beach, we break out the light ales and white wines.  We don't give asparagus a second thought.

But we should.  Because if we dress it up for summer, if we pour on generous helpings of smoking dressing and hard boiled eggs, if we roast it until caramelized and crispy, asparagus just might surprise us.  It may provide the perfect early summer meal, along side some bread and a dish of fresh cheese.  We need to fill our dinners with something as we wait for the hot sun to ripen summer fruits and vegetables, and asparagus - this creamy, sweet, crispy, spicy, dressed up asparagus - fits the bill.

Roasted Asparagus with Yogurt Dressing
Serves three

For the dressing:

1 c yogurt
2 T lemon juice
1 t smoked paprika
1 clove garlic, minced
pinch salt

For the asparagus:

2 T olive oil
1 1/2 lbs asparagus, trimmed
salt and pepper

To serve:

3 eggs
squeeze lemon juice
drizzle olive oil

Whisk all dressing ingredients together.  Cover, and chill in the fridge until ready to serve.

In the meantime, hard boil your eggs.  I like to cover them with water in a pot, heat the pot over high heat, and bring to a boil.  Then turn down the heat to simmer the water for 10 minutes.  Immediately drain and shock eggs with cold water.  Let coo, before peeling and slicing.

Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium high heat.  Add asparagus, and cover.  Cook asparagus for 3 to 5 minutes, depending on the thickness of your spears.  Remove lid, increase heat to high, and season with salt and pepper.  Cook for another 5 to 7 minutes.

To serve, pour dressing over asparagus, and top with sliced eggs.  Squeeze some lemon juice and drizzle some olive oil over the whole dish.

Waffles with Warm Cherry Sauce

Have I mentioned my slight obsession with German food?  I make German and Mexican food so often that my wife has suggested I write a German/Mexican fusion cookbook (with recipes including Kale and Potato Enchiladas and Five Alarm Goulash).  It's partly an interest in the foods of my wife's childhood and heritage, but it mostly has to do with the fact that German food is mostly butter and cream (see also: my obsession with French food).

My wife has been asking me to recreate this dish for some time.  In Northern Germany, pastries are an art and an essential part of life.  Most afternoons, friends and family gather at bakeries or in each other's homes around cakes stuffed with marzipan or prune butter (everything topped with whipped cream, obviously).  If you happen to be out for a walk along the beach, you need a mobile sweet afternoon snack.  For this, you have several choices: ice cream, crepes, or waffles.  The latter is often topped with warm berries, known as rote grutze (literally red porridge, or similar).  Since the cherries are going crazy right now, I thought it would be a good time to give this Northern German treat a go.

The tricky thing about this particular dish is that you can't just go and dump some normal cherries on normal waffles.  German cherries are sour, and German waffles are so incredibly light (nothing like what sits next to  your bacon and sausage, waiting to be topped with maple syrup).  They are thin, airy, and crispy, resembling the delicate cookies known as eiserkuhen.

I had to adapt for my American kitchen.  The cherries were not sour, the waffles perhaps not so thin.  But they were delicious and were granted approval from the expert who has eaten waffles in Germany for many years.  I had the pleasure of spending some time in Germany two years ago (which is good, since these islands may not exist in a few decades).  I miss the wind worn landscape, the cold North Sea, the green meadows, and the endless beaches.  But mostly I miss the pastries.  So making these waffles is a little like bringing some of Germany home, so I can close my eyes, smell the salt, feel the wind, and taste the butter.

German Waffles with Warm Cherry Sauce (Rote Grutze)
Serves 4

For the rote gruzte:

1 c cherries, pitted and chopped
2 c water
2 T corn starch
dash red wine (optional)
sugar

Place cherries and water in a saucepan over medium heat.  Bring to a boil, and cook for half an hour, stirring occasionally.  Add wine a few minutes before the half hour.  Dissolve corn starch in a little water, and add it to the mixture.  Stir until there are no lumps.  Add sugar to taste (I need a few tablespoons).  Remove from heat, and let cool slightly before serving.

For the waffles:

1/3 c water
2/3 c flour
2 eggs
1/3 c sugar
1/2 c melted butter
1/2 t baking powder

Mix all ingredients well, stirring until there are no lumps.  Heat your waffle iron, and cook waffles according to your iron.

Serve waffles topped with rote grutze and powdered sugar.

Mexican Chocolate Gelato

I recently had the opportunity (and the good sense) to take a week break between finishing one job and starting another.  Some people would take a week off to sleep in, watch TV, maybe go to the gym or long walks, and generally spend time lounging about in vacation mode.

I painted cabinets.  And I sewed curtains, hung up curtains, decorated walls with art from Goodwill, set up shelves, planted a garden, trimmed trees, and cleaned this house until the kitchen sink was actually white again (I don't want to talk about what color it was before).  And I still felt lazy.  There were projects I didn't finish and others I never even started.  Now two days into my new job, I look back on last week with the realization that perhaps my goals were too lofty, and my relaxation was too slight.  But some people kick back by pulling up weeds.  I can't help it.

Another thing that makes me feel lazy is making ice cream.  I've talked about my ice cream maker before, and honestly, I was not kidding that I never regret buying the thing.  I even have a wife who doesn't like ice cream, so I don't make it as often as I might, and it still gets enough use to be worth it.  One use would be worth it.  There are some foods for which homemade and store bought don't even compare.  Ice cream just happens to be one of them.  The homemade stuff is in a different world.  You don't have time to make homemade ice cream?  That's where the lazy comes in.

As kids, we filled an ice cream maker with ice and salt and took turns cranking the handle until we were rewarded with the perfectly creamy result.  These days, I just keep the container in the freezer and throw in ingredients when the mood strikes.  An hour or two later, I have a quart frozen dessert that cost about as much to make as just one scoop at the local shop.  And I can control the process, experiment with flavors, and ensure my ingredients are fresh and humanely raised and sold.

Mexican chocolate really just means chocolate with cinnamon.  I am a huge fan of the intensity that cinnamon brings to any dish, and I add it by the spoonful.  Kick it up a notch if you really like spice, and take it down if you want a subtle flavor.  As always, use the highest quality chocolate you can find for the best results.  But churn it by hand or do it the lazy way, and you'll pretty much end up with the same gelato.

Mexican Chocolate Gelato
Makes a quart

2 c whole milk
1 c heavy cream
1/2 c unsweetened cocoa powder
4 oz bittersweet chocolate
4 large eggs
3/4 c brown sugar
1 t cinnamon

Combine milk and cream in a saucepan over medium-low heat.  Stir occasionally, and cook until mixture is 170 degrees.  Turn off the heat, and whisk in cocoa powder.  Add the chocolate, and stir until completely melted.  In another bowl, whisk eggs and brown sugar together until thick.  Temper the mixture by adding a ladle of the chocolate mixture, and then add the egg mixture to the saucepan.  Cook over low heat until you have a thick custard.  The mixture should be around 185 degrees.

Cool the mixture completely by leaving in the fridge for a few hours.  Add cinnamon, and prepare gelato according to your ice cream maker's instructions.  Transfer to an airtight container, and freezer for several hours before serving.

Sweet Plantains

This dish, like most good things in life, started with a Sesame Street segment.  As part of its liberal, hippie indoctrination, the show was always showing how children of different cultures sleep, go to school, dance, play, and eat (hey, everybody does it).  During one such episode, a mother made a dish that looked so good, I wanted to recreate it immediately.  Unfortunately, my younger self had never come across a plantain before, and I took the fruit on the television to be a banana.  Simple enough mistake, but bananas do not fry up the same way as plantains, and the result was, well, not exactly what I had expected.

Flash forward fifteen or so years, and I discovered my first plantain.  I immediately remembered my Sesame Street induced disappointment and knew that I had finally found my answer.  That mother wasn't frying up bananas - she was frying up their much starchier cousin, the plantain.

There's a Cuban restaurant near my old workplace that is famous for its plantains.  They make them two ways: garlicy and sweet.  The sweet plantains are so perfectly soft and syrupy, and I knew I had to recreate them at home.  I mastered the basic fried plantain long ago (fry, squish, fry again, salt), but I had never tried to make them sweet.  And so, with a Sesame Street memory in my head, I went for it.

These are as easy, if not easier, than their salty counterparts.  No need to squish and refry - simply cook them down in a sugary, cinnamon mess.  Then serve them up with a side of rice and beans (or in my case, shrimp and beans).  But I'm not so sure Sesame Street would approve of all the sugar (things have changed in that neighborhood since I was a kid).

Sweet Plantains
Serves 3-4 as a side

2 ripe plantains, cut into pieces
4 T butter
2 T brown sugar
1/2 t vanilla
pinch cinnamon

Melt butter in a skillet over medium heat.  Add the plantains, and cook until soft, about 10 minutes.  Make sure to flip them over half way through to brown both sides.  Add the sugar, vanilla, and cinnamon, and continue cooking for another two minutes.  Stir to coat the plantains, and serve immediately.