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New Potato and Caramelized Leek Tart in an Olive Oil Crust

11 May

While I’ll admit to the occasional dinner that was not so much “cooked” as it was “spotted at the cheese counter and then paired up with a baguette and consumed with great enthusiasm,” there are, in fact, more instances than I can count during which I decided to make a dinner that was based on a bag of discounted vegetables at the green market.

Sounds suspect, you say?  Not if you saw the types of goods the green market offers on their discount shelf, all of which are sold in bulk for a mere $1.  Bags of red and orange peppers combined with a dozen tomatillos?  Yes.  Ten perfectly ripe avocados that need to be eaten as soon as you get home, but, hey, that’s okay because who doesn’t love avocados?  Definitely.  Half a dozen habanero chilies, two yellow onions, four plump tomatoes, and a handful of green beans?  That right there is homemade salsa, plus a crisp snack to munch while you make the salsa.

Last week, however, the $1 shelf outdid itself.  As if it somehow managed to read my mind, the green market had decided to off load a pile of new potatoes and spring leeks, both of which, though generally associated with heartier winter fare, had been on my mind lately (perhaps because of the preponderance of chilly weather we’ve been subjected to for what seems like an eternity).  The cold in my bones was thinking soup, but a brief peek of sunlight through the clouds brightened my mood enough to encourage me to begin thinking of something a little lighter and more spring-ish.

While not everyone might think of a tart as being spring fare, I have to disagree.  A vegetable tart, made with this exceptionally savory and flavorful olive oil crust, can be a perfect warm weather meal.  Eaten on a bed of fresh spinach or baby greens, it is light, yet filling, and the abundance of greens evidenced in the meal is always a welcome sight.  Well, to me, at least.  But, as previously discussed, I also get excited about a $1 bag of cast-off vegetables, so perhaps I should just say that you shouldn’t take my word that this tart is a welcome and delicious spring meal, you should instead simply make the tart and discover its deliciousness for yourself.

New Potato and Caramelized Leek Tart in an Olive Oil Crust

Olive Oil Crust

1 ½ cups all purpose flour

½ teaspoon salt

1/3 cup olive oil

3 tablespoons milk

Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a medium bowl, sift together flour and salt.  In a small bowl, combine olive oil and milk and whisk together until integrated.  Add milk and oil mixture to flour mixture and, using a fork, combine the mixture until fully incorporated.

Gather the dough together and knead it into a ball.  Press it evenly into the bottom and sides of a 9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom (I use a small measuring cup to smooth everything into place and it works wonders).  Pierce crust on sides and bottom with a fork, and parbake in the preheated oven until only very slightly browned on the edges, 10-12 minutes.

Remove tart crust from oven and lower oven temperature to 375 degrees F.

New Potato and Caramelized Leek Filling

3 large leeks, fully rinsed and trimmed of their dark tops

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 large sprig fresh thyme

salt and pepper to taste

12 ounces new potatoes (or red or Yukon gold, or any other small, creamy potato) scrubbed and then sliced about ¼-inch thick

½ cup milk

2 eggs

1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese

Slice rinsed and trimmed leeks in half lengthwise, then slice the white and light green parts about ¼-inch thick.  On medium low heat, combine butter and olive oil and heat until butter is almost completely melted and just begins to foam.  Add leeks and thyme, stir to coat leeks with butter and olive oil, then reduce heat to low. Cook, stirring frequently, over low heat until leeks are softened and gently caramelized to a light brown color, about 25 minutes.  Remove from heat, add salt and pepper to taste, and set aside.

While leeks are cooking, boil the potato slices in lightly salted water until crisp tender, about 7-10 minutes.  Drain potato slices and set aside.

In a small bowl, combine eggs and milk and beat to combine well.  Add in parmesan cheese and continue to mix until combined.  Add cooled, caramelized leeks to the egg mixture, making sure to remove the sprig of thyme, then mix well to combine.

Arrange the potato slices in the parbaked tart shell, overlapping them in a concentric circle.  Pour egg and leek mixture over the potatoes.

Bake for 35-45 minutes, until the middle of the tart is set and no longer wet.  The leeks exposed on top of the tart will turn dark brown and continue to caramelize even further, which is fantastic.  However, if, partway through baking, you see your leeks starting to turn brown to the point of blackening and burning, loosely cover the tart with a sheet of foil for the remainder of the baking time.

Serve warm or at room temperature.

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Ya Hala’s Hummus

2 May

Up until last week, I had never made hummus.  This may not seem strange to you, but to me, a person who has been known to make a loaf of bread from scratch for the sole purpose of turning that bread into croutons as an accompaniment for salad (I didn’t say it was a smart thing to do, I am just pointing out that I did it), it seemed downright puzzling.

But I have a reason for my avoidance.  It’s not that I thought making hummus would be too difficult or time consuming, and it’s not as though I thought that prepackaged hummus tasted good enough to permanently sit in for an attempt at making a home made batch.  Embarrassingly, my hesitating was the result of something far less rational, and it went a little something like this:

If I am going to make hummus, it is going to have to taste as good as the hummus at Ya Hala.

That might not sound very reasonable at first mention, but hear me out.  I know the basic components of hummus (chickpeas, tahini, lemon juice, garlic), and I know that I could have just retrieved those ingredients, thrown them in the food processor, and come up with an end result that was tasty and entirely edible, but that’s the basic end result that I get when I buy a pint of hummus from Trader Joe’s, and making something that tastes like it came from Trader Joe’s is not high on my list of worthy accomplishments.  If I was going to make hummus, it had to be thick, but not impassably so.  It had to be creamy, but not runny.  It had to be garlicky enough to have a kick, but not so garlicky that my tongue felt scorched after one bite.  In short, it had to be the delicious and dreamy hummus that, heretofore, I had only had the pleasure of eating at one of my favorite local Middle Eastern restaurants.

Then, as if by magic, my prayers to the hummus gods were answered.  Flipping through an errant pile of papers on a dining room bookshelf, I found a newspaper profile of the family that runs a trifecta of fantastic Lebanese restaurants in Portland: Hoda’s, Nicholas, and the aforementioned Ya Hala.  The article told of the family’s sojourn from Lebanon, their unlikely journey to becoming restaurateurs, and, what’s this?  The article includes family recipes?  For flatbread, kebabs and (this is when the clouds parted and an unearthly beam of light shined down from the heavens upon the newspaper before me) hummus?

This story would have a much tidier ending if I told you that I immediately dropped everything I was doing and headed straight to the kitchen to whip up a batch of this mythical hummus, but that’s not quite how things turned out.  First of all, it was to my extreme consternation that I discovered the date on the newspaper read 2009, meaning that I had held onto this recipe for two full years without remembering so (note that I didn’t say I did not know I had the recipe, because what I almost instantly realized when I saw the recipe was that, oh, yeah, I remember reading this article and then saving it to try the recipes later and then, yes, completely and totally forgetting all about it).  Secondly, it took at least another week before I could attempt the hummus, as often happens when life interferes with one’s greatest recipe intentions.  But, oh, when I finally made the hummus, in all its creamy, tangy, and thick glory, it was, without a doubt completely worth the wait.  If only the end of my wait hadn’t spent the last two years sitting a mere couple of feet from where I sit at the dining room table every single day of the week.

Ya Hala’s Hummus

From Mirna Attar, via the Oregonian

According to the article, and as evidenced by my repeated tastings, baking soda is the key to silky smooth hummus.  Baking soda helps soften the beans so they cook quickly and break down easily when blended.  According to the recipe, this hummus can be prepared up to 2 days ahead and stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator until ready to use (but we ate this hummus for a whole week and it was just divine).  Additionally, I find that the hummus tastes best when allowed to rest for a few hours in the fridge before eating.  Resting seems to allow the flavors to combine more smoothly and intensely.  Straight from the food processor the flavor was good, but after spending a few hours in the refrigerator the flavor of the hummus became infinitely more silky and fantastic.

1 cup dry garbanzo beans

7 cups water (for cooking beans)

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1/2 heaping teaspoon minced garlic

1/4 cup tahini

1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

Rinse the garbanzo beans, drain and cover with water to cover by 3 inches.  Soak beans for 4 to 6 hours. Drain in a colander and rinse thoroughly.  In a large pot combine soaked beans, the 7 cups water, and the baking soda.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer until the beans are falling apart, about 1 hour.  Stir any foam that comes to the surface back into the beans while they cook.  Pour beans and any remaining cooking liquid into a large bowl and cool to room temperature in the refrigerator.

Transfer beans and liquid to a food processor.  Add the salt, garlic, tahini, and lemon juice and process until smooth.  If the mixture is too thick (it should be the consistency of very thick cream), add water 1 tablespoon at a time until the hummus is smooth.  Transfer to a medium serving bowl and allow to rest in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour.  If desired, drizzle with olive oil before serving.

Makes roughly 2 1/2 cups hummus.

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Roasted Poblano Johnnycakes

5 Apr

I grew up reading the Little House books, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s original nine volume set of semi-autobiographical books about pioneer life.  As a harbinger of interests to come, one of the things I remember most enjoying about the books was Laura’s descriptions of the foods she and her family ate.  When times were good and they had a home with four walls, a well-tended garden, and tidy fields of wheat and corn crops, her family ate fresh garden vegetables and fresh homemade cottage cheese.  When times were rough and months were spent living in a covered wagon or outliving seven straight months of blizzards, they ate bread, potatoes, and, if they were lucky, whatever wild game they could shoot.  Every single thing they ate was cooked in cast iron or baked within an open fire.

Recently my husband and I started reading the Little House books to our preschool-aged son.  In addition to the occasional on-the-fly edit in order to omit the rather blunt and one-sided talk about the local Native American tribes (the original inhabitants of the land on which Laura’s family was settling), we have spent a great deal of time discussing the different types of food that Laura and her family ate.  (We also spent a great deal of time talking about food when we read Farmer Boy, since a substantial portion of that book is spent discussing the mountains of food that Laura’s husband Almanzo ate when he was a boy—every meal seemed to be presented as an exercise in competitive calorie intake, no doubt as a result of their twelve hours a day of hard manual labor on a farm.)  Much of the food of the era, as well as the manner in which people got that food, is not only unfamiliar to a city-dwelling boy of 4.5 years of age, it’s also nearly unimaginable.  What’s a prairie hen?  What is salt pork?  And did you really just say that Pa shot a bunny rabbit so the family could roast it for Christmas dinner?

Perhaps in an effort to distract our son from the fact that Laura’s Pa could frequently be found shooting and skinning what is regarded, to some people in this house, as being the world’s greatest animal, I decided that we should focus our attention on a pioneer-era food that was less fraught with peril and woe.  That is, in essence, the long story of how I came to make johnnycakes.

As luck would have it, one of my favorite breakfast food bibles, James McNair’s Breakfast, happened to have, smack dab in the center of the book, a simple recipe for Johnnycakes.  A quick perusal of the ingredients led me to some automatic adjustments, namely the immediate realization that these crispy corn cakes were just begging to be paired up with something mildly spicy and smooth to counter the sweetness and crunchiness.  One roasted poblano pepper later, I had exactly what I had imagined.

When paired with a soft fried egg and an additional sprinkle of chopped roasted poblanos, you’ve got yourself one special meal, suitable for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.  Though not entirely traditional in the pioneer sense, I’d like to think that, were the times good and the livestock thriving, it might even possibly be considered Laura-approved.

Roasted Poblano Johnnycakes

Partially adapted from James McNair’s Breakfast

1 medium-sized poblano pepper

1 cup white flint or other stone-ground cornmeal

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup boiling water

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

1 teaspoon sugar

1/4 cup milk

Set your oven’s broiler to high heat and place an oven rack on the highest shelf, nearest the heat of the broiler.  Set the poblano pepper on a heavy baking sheet, then place directly under the broiler.  Let the skin of the pepper blister, darken, and flake.  Turn pepper several times, allowing its skin to blister and flake on all sides.  When pepper’s skin has been uniformly darkened, remove pepper from oven and set on a plate, cover with aluminum foil, and allow pepper to cool to the touch and the skin to become loose.  When pepper has cooled slightly, remove the skin.  Remove and discard stem and seeds.  Roughly chop roasted pepper and set aside 1/4 cup to add to the johnny cake batter.

In a bowl, combine the cornmeal and the salt, then gradually add the boiling water, whisking to prevent lumps and integrate cornmeal and water.  Stir in the melted butter, sugar, and milk.  Stir in 1/4 cup chopped roasted poblano pepper.

Meanwhile, heat a griddle or a large, heavy skillet over medium-high heat, then generously brush with melted butter.

Spoon the batter, about a heaping tablespoon for each cake, onto the cooking surface.  Cook turning once, until crisp and golden on both sides.  Serve hot.  If desired, top with a soft fried egg and an additional sprinkling of chopped roasted poblano pepper.

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