Week 13: The black-thorn winter continues…
It’s well into mid-May and this morning I pulled my boots back out of the closet to walk to the supermarket. The days are quite long already and I’m having trouble resisting the urge to swap out our winter sweaters for lighter fare. But here in Europe, I’ve learned, this comes as no surprise. This is the black-thorn winter accredited to the “Eisheiligen”, the “Ice Saints”. The last frosty nights of the year have been known to fall between the 11th and 15th of May and the saints attributed to those days (first Saint Marmetus, then Saint Pancras, followed by Saint Servatius and Saint Boniface, and finally “kalte Sophie”) have the honor of being awarded the epithet “the cold gardeners”. (Traditionally it is ill-advised to do any planting before the feast of Saint Sophia on May 15.)
All of this would be fine if by now (May 19) it was sunny and warm. But there’s a good explanation for that too: about 450 years ago we switched from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian Calendar. (Gotcha!) So the equivalent in 2016, in climatic terms, is May 21-25. Bad news for shorts and sandals, but good news for potato eaters! Stave off spring with these heart-warming potato and apple specials:
Spargel-kartoffel Salat, dazu Guacamole (Asparagus-potato salad with guacamole)
Turbot aux pommes (Fancy fish with apples)
Spargel-kartoffel Salat, dazu Guacamole (Asparagus-potato salad with guacamole)
It might not feel like it outside but it is asparagus season right now (mid-March through, precisely, June 24–the Feast of Saint John, or course) and at chez Maureen we are fully of the opinion that asparagus is worth the extra pennies: white, purple or green. And in its many forms: boiled, steamed, sautéed, souped. (If we had a barbecue, we would grill them.) In Germany asparagus is most often served peeping out from under a generous blanket of hollandaise sauce, thereby completely negating any of its nutritional advantages but nonetheless remaining a delicious springtime treat.
As you may recall, I recently became the proud owner of an asparagus peeler for the very practical reason that white asparagus needs to be peeled. It’s much thicker than its green cousin and the outer skin is highly inedible. (In fact, if you’d like to know, white asparagus grows under the ground, while green asparagus grows above ground.) In Germany, a few weeks back, I picked up a cooking magazine dedicated to the preparation of this springtime vegetable. The pictured recipes are tantalizing, and it turns out really delicious. When I came across one that included potatoes and guacamole (intriguing!), I knew we were in business. I had to giggle though because the recipe calls for “new potatoes” (another springtime specialty) and if there’s one thing my potatoes are not, it’s “new”.
(The recipe is adapted from the one featured in the magazine Lust auf Genuss, “Die neue Spargelküche” from 5/2016. I’m going to go out on a limb and suppose that the magazine is probably not to be found at your local Barnes&Nobles or Gibert Jeune so if you’d like to see the original, contact me and I’ll scan and send it to you.)
Potatoes, small and new (if you’re lucky enough to be buying potatoes by the pound, otherwise dig the smallest ones out from the bottom of the sack), 1-1/2 lbs (800 g)
Asparagus, green, 1 lb (500 g)
Sugar, 1 Tbsp
Scallions or spring onions, 3
White wine vinegar, 4 Tbsp
Olive oil, 2 Tbsp
Mustard, 2 Tbsp (Interesting cultural cooking fact: Europeans don’t use measuring spoons. My mother-in-law recently gave me a set she had found in her kitchen along with a bit of a puzzled look and a mysterious explanation like “someone gave these to me from the U.S. but I really don’t know what they would be good for”. It turns out that here they just use, well, a table spoon and a tea spoon to measure, respectively, a Tbsp and a tsp. Can you guess what they use for measuring a cup?)
Salt + pepper
Avocado, 2
Cilantro (in France, coriandre. It took me 6 years, and hours of searching French supermarkets, to figure out that cilantro and coriander are two parts of the same plant and the French just use the same word for both. And now you know too! Here you thought reading this blog was a waste of time…)
Lemon juice
- Wash the potatoes well. If they are old and wrinkly, you can peel them. Otherwise leave the skins on. Cook in salt water for about 20 minutes. Then drain and halve.
- Break off the woody ends of the asparagus (I learned from my fancy German asparagus magazine that it is better to break the ends than to cut them because the asparagus will naturally break where the woody part ends.) If necessary, peel the lower third of the asparagus. Then cut them into 1 inch (2 cm) pieces, putting the tops on the side.
- Boil a bit of water with the sugar and some salt in the bottom of a frying pan. Add the asparagus pieces and let them cook for about 10 minutes, adding the tops in for the last 3 minutes.
- Thinly slice the scallions. Place them in a bowl and pour a bit of the hot water from the cooked asparagus on top.
- Combine the scallions with the vinegar, oil, mustard, salt and pepper.
- Stir in the potato halves and the asparagus.
- Prepare a guacamole to your liking. I simply mashed the avocado flesh with a bit of lemon juice and chopped cilantro. The original recipe suggested adding crème fraiche to the mashed avocados but my tex-mex instincts tell me that wouldn’t really be guacamole.
- Serve the potato-asparagus salad with a hefty dollop of guacamole and sprinkled with chopped chervil (an ancient herb that’s making a comeback). The wine? White burgundy for the toddler. Water for the adults.
Spargel-kartoffel Salat, dazu Guacamole (Asparagus-potato salad with guacamole)
Ingredients
- Potatoes small and new, 1-1/2 lbs (800 g)
- Asparagus green, 1 lb (500 g)
- Sugar 1 Tbsp
- Scallions or spring onions 3
- White wine vinegar 4 Tbsp
- Olive oil 2 Tbsp
- Mustard 2 Tbsp
- Salt + pepper
- Avocado 2
- Cilantro in France, coriandre
- Lemon juice
Instructions
- Wash the potatoes well. If they are old and wrinkly, you can peel them. Otherwise leave the skins on. Cook in salt water for about 20 minutes. Then drain and halve.
- Break off the woody ends of the asparagus (I learned from my fancy German asparagus magazine that it is better to break the ends than to cut them because the asparagus will naturally break where the woody part ends.) If necessary, peel the lower third of the asparagus. Then cut them into 1 inch (2 cm) pieces, putting the tops on the side.
- Boil a bit of water with the sugar and some salt in the bottom of a frying pan. Add the asparagus pieces and let them cook for about 10 minutes, adding the tops in for the last 3 minutes.
- Thinly slice the scallions. Place them in a bowl and pour a bit of the hot water from the cooked asparagus on top.
- Combine the scallions with the vinegar, oil, mustard, salt and pepper.
- Stir in the potato halves and the asparagus.
- Prepare a guacamole to your liking. I simply mashed the avocado flesh with a bit of lemon juice and chopped cilantro.
- Serve the potato-asparagus salad with a hefty dollop of guacamole and sprinkled with chopped chervil (an ancient herb that’s making a comeback).
Notes
Turbot aux pommes (Fancy fish with apples)
If you’re looking for an excuse to pop open a bottle of hard cider and you’re into the idea of shallots caramelized in said cider and then soaked in butter and cream, this is the recipe for you! Don’t be thrown off by the fancy turbot, it’s easily replaced by a humbler white fish. Case in point: I began to prepare this recipe for lunch on a random Thursday with full intention of going to the fishmonger and asking for turbot (which I have never had before). Then I read that turbot is “rare et cher” (that’s “difficult to find and expensive”, in other words not really worth it for a lunch being served to a toddler) and besides that it caused a war (Turbot war, 1994-1996). A quick internet search confirmed that turbot can be easily replaced. (whew!) A gander through the supermarket led me to frozen cod filets. We had a match! To celebrate I splurged 3.70€ on the *organic* hard apple cider (definitely worth it for a lunch being served to the toddler’s mother).
Our gratitude to Toute la cuisine au fil des saisons for the recipe.
White fish filets, (turbot? cod?) 4, 5-6 oz apiece (150 g)
Egg yolks, 2
Butter, 13 Tbsp (190 g)
Apples, at least 3, one red, one yellow, one green (somehow a green apple had smuggled its way into our fruit bowl so it found its place atop the fish filet along with two Normand apples, one slightly yellow and the other slightly red.)
Lemon juice
Salt + pepper
Crème fraiche, 2 Tbsp
Shallots, 2
Cider, hard, dry, ½ cup (10 cl)
Apple cider vinegar, ¼ cup (5 cl)
- Quarter and core the unpeeled apples. Set aside 4 quarters. Thinly slice the remaining quarters and place them into a bowl of ice water with lemon juice (it’s kind of like a facial for apples). Cut the lucky 4 quarters into large slices. Cook them for 5 minutes with 1 Tbsp (10 g) of butter until they are golden. (If you’re not trying to save on apples, I would recommend cooking a couple more in couple more tablespoons of butter. Apples, like most things, sautéed golden in butter are highly sought after at the lunch table.)
- Peel and chop the shallots. Place them in a sauce pan with the hard cider and the vinegar and then boil until the liquid is reduced to 2 tablespoons. (Making reductions is tricky when you’ve got toddlers under your charge. Mine reduced a bit too far and I ended up with about a ¼ tsp of liquid. I added a bit more cider to stretch it back out. Moral of the story: reductions are for DINKs.)
- Preheat oven to 410°F (210°C) and butter a large baking dish.
- Rince and dry the fish filets. Season with salt and pepper and place in baking dish. Beat together the egg yolks with 2 Tbsp of cold water. Brush onto the fish filets. Then cover the filets with the fine slices of apple, preferably alternating colors to create visual harmonies. Put small slabs of butter on top.
- Bake for 10 minutes.
- Put the shallot-cider reduction back onto the stove top. Add in 10 Tbsp (150 g) of butter cut in small pieces while whisking vigorously. (If your toddler needs attention while you’re vigorously whisking, give him, or her, the cork from the hard cider bottle to suck on. It’s organic too.) Add the crème fraiche.
- Serve the filets with the apple slices and the caramelized-in-butter apple slices drizzled with the reduction. Await your toddler’s adoring applause.
Turbot aux pommes (Fancy fish with apples)
Ingredients
- White fish filets (turbot? cod?) 4, 5-6 oz apiece (150 g)
- Egg yolks 2
- Butter 13 Tbsp (190 g)
- Apples at least 3, one red, one yellow, one green
- Lemon juice
- Salt + pepper
- Crème fraiche 2 Tbsp
- Shallots 2
- Cider hard, dry, ½ cup (10 cl)
- Apple cider vinegar ¼ cup (5 cl)
Instructions
- Quarter and core the unpeeled apples. Set aside 4 quarters.
- Thinly slice the remaining quarters and place them into a bowl of ice water with lemon juice (it’s kind of like a facial for apples).
- Cut the lucky 4 quarters into large slices. Cook them for 5 minutes with 1 Tbsp (10 g) of butter until they are golden. (If you’re not trying to save on apples, I would recommend cooking a couple more in couple more tablespoons of butter. Apples, like most things, sautéed golden in butter are highly sought after at the lunch table.)
- Peel and chop the shallots.
- Place them in a sauce pan with the hard cider and the vinegar and then boil until the liquid is reduced to 2 tablespoons.
- Preheat oven to 410°F (210°C) and butter a large baking dish.
- Rinse and dry the fish filets. Season with salt and pepper and place in baking dish.
- Beat together the egg yolks with 2 Tbsp of cold water. Brush onto the fish filets.
- Then cover the filets with the fine slices of apple, preferably alternating colors to create visual harmonies. Put small slabs of butter on top.
- Bake for 10 minutes.
- Put the shallot-cider reduction back onto the stove top. Add in 10 Tbsp (150 g) of butter cut in small pieces while whisking vigorously.
- Add the crème fraiche.
- Serve the filets with the apple slices and the caramelized-in-butter apple slices drizzled with the reduction.
