In the last post I talked about how I made it to the market just in time for rhubarb season. Well I had another close encounter for this post as well. There were some fiddleheads that showed up at my local farmers market that just had to come home with me.
If you thought that rhubarb season moves fast, fiddlehead season goes by much quicker. The ones at the farmers market were foraged and had a sale window of about 2 weeks. When products like these become available you have to be flexible enough to get them and use them in the best way possible and quickly. Otherwise, as I found out with the rhubarb, the harvest is over and you have to wait another year to try them.
Rhubarb really signals the end of winter and the wonderful transition to much warmer climates for me. I love a good strawberry rhubarb pie with whipped cream. Even the last post's dessert could become one of my new traditions.
Fiddleheads are different, however. They don't yet give me the same seasonal emotional content. I've seen them plenty of times growing up, just never thought to give them a try. They are the fronds of a young fern that are treated as a vegetable. What do they taste like? Imagine asparagus and spinach had an illegitimate love child and you get the picture. Getting to try new things is one of the major perks of doing this project, so I'm eager to jump in.
In this antipasto preparation, Mario has us pickling the fiddleheads for use in a salad with capocollo, a rich cold cut meat, from the Italian capo or head and collo or neck.
Babbo makes their own capocollo, the recipe for which was not included in this cookbook. I'm sure that I could have searched for one online and waited the six months or so for it to fully cure, but I didn't want to wait that long. The fiddleheads are ready now. Maybe I'll try to cure some capocollo some day. For now, I just wanted to try this dish.
Here were the fiddleheads that I found:
Nice huh? I start by pickling the fiddleheads. In a non-reactive sauce pan I boil white wine vinegar, water, sea salt, peppercorns, garlic, fennel seeds, and sugar. I pour this mixture over the fiddleheads and let them cool to room temperature.
At the same market, I found the dandelion greens for this recipe and I combined them with lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper.
The capocollo was fairly easy to find so long as you have a good deli locally to rely on.
This very simple salad is ready to plate. The thin capocollo slices get arranged around the plate. The greens get placed in the center along with a few of the pickles.
It was good. Not the best thing ever. But good.
It's a simple plate, but pickling is a great technique to learn even for the home cook. Pickling adds a much needed acid element to a rich fatty dish, which is why you'll see it popping up in many restaurant menus lately. It's also a great way to preserve food. Don't want to use fiddleheads? Try this recipe with cucumbers fresh from the garden.
Speaking of garden, I built a raised bed for my vegetables. Everything is planted, including the cardoons that I hope sprout well because I need them badly. Next year I plan on expanding and building more beds, but what I have will work for now.
I have a good plan for the next few posts, one of which I didn't think that I would be able to make because of how hard the main ingredient is to find. But I'll wash the baby bottles, rock my newborn to sleep, and head back into the kitchen to keep the momentum going. Until next time...
The baby wait is finally over! Our daughter, Dublin Rose, was born on May 3 at 1:10 in the afternoon after a very long labor. She's beautiful, healthy, and making sure that her parents aren't getting much sleep. She also managed to be two weeks late and ended up being born on my wife and I's anniversary. Its a very nice surprise considering that I too was born two weeks late and on my parents anniversary back in 1979! What are the astronomical odds of that?
I planned to post a picture of her sooner but as you can imagine there was a lot going on. Regardless, she's settled in at home and I'm back with cookbook in hand and ready to cook.
It's a great time to be cooking here in Holyoke as we have finally entered rhubarb season. I missed it by just a few weeks last year, so I wanted to make sure that some stalks came home with me this time around. I've been wanting to try this next recipe since I bought the book.
Budino is the Italian word for custard or pudding. They are popping up more often on trendy Italian restaurant menus across the country. Mario adds semolina to this one, a type of flour, which I think will change the texture slightly and firm it up to where the budino can free stand on its own. Let's get started.
There is an omission as to what the oven should be preheated to so we have to assume 350°. I take some more of those handy foil ramekins, butter them, and dust them with sugar.
In a small sauce pan I add sliced rhubarb, sugar, and a vanilla bean and cook it over medium heat until the rhubarb is tender.
This mixture needs to cool and as it does I start the budino batter. I use the kitchen aid mixer and beat egg yolks and sugar until they are a very pale yellow.
Vanilla extract, melted butted, and milk are then added.
Next up, semolina and cake flour is added.
The cooled rhubarb is ready to be folded into the batter along with whipped egg whites.
The batter can now be portioned into the ramekins and put into a baking dish with water that goes up to about 2/3 of the height of the ramekins. The pan gets covered in foil and the budini are baked for about 25 minutes, and additionally up to 10 minutes uncovered until they are set in the middle. I found that 25 minutes was plenty of time in my oven but you making this at home may need the additional time that Mario suggests.
While the budini are baking, I use the rest of the rhubarb to make the marmellata. In a sauce pan I add finely diced rhubarb, sugar, vanilla bean, and mint, and cook it down slowly for about 10 minutes until tender yet still able to maintain its shape. This too gets cooled completely.
Finally I'm ready to plate. I wanna try this like right now! The smell in my kitchen is intoxicating. I run a pairing knife around the edge of the budino and put it on the plate, along with a copious amount of the marmellata and some whipped cream.
The plating is classic Babbo. Simple yet elegant. My wife and I dove into these hardcore! This dessert really lets you know that spring is here. My wife declared this to be her favorite dessert so far. We took some over to my in-laws, because it's hard for us to eat all of the yield, and they too thought that this was a home run. It's just sweet enough without over doing it. I'm glad that I got to make this it was worth the wait.
The local farmers market has just opened and I'll be checking it out weekly to see what is special that I can bring home. They usually have some great stuff to choose from. It's even on my day off.
I still haven't quite got around to tilling out my space for my garden yet but I plan to tackle that next Monday. As you can see below, my seedlings are ready for a bigger home. This year I plan on building raised beds to keep everything more organized and looking better, but I'll keep you posted.
Well the break is over. Back to bottle making, laundry, and holding my precious newborn. Until next time...
