Spring Herbs: A favorite pasta

It's the beautiful early days of spring in Davis: when it's sunny but still cool and the blustery rainy days are belied by the glorious blue skies.  The perennials are leaping after their sleeping, the shoots are shooting up, and the fruit trees are everywhere extravagantly in bloom.  It’s difficult to resist the clichés about the season that come so easily to mind

Bitweene Merch and Averil
When spray beginneth to spring.

This is a pasta dish that we think can be made only in early spring, for it relies on tender herbs at their first growth, and the onion and garlic chives that are everywhere in the market right now.   

We’ve seen many recipes for this basic kind of pasta, but ours is adapted from Lynne Rossetto Kasper’s famous The Splendid Table.  Our signal for making this now was seeing the very first basil to appear at the market, at California Vegetable Specialties, who have been bringing little pots of basil not intended for planting but rather, for taking home and snipping leaves as needed (as well as their wonderful, small English and Japanese cucumbers).    

One could make a different version of this dish later in the summer that, like pesto, would center on the taste of the basil, which will then be available in huge bunches everywhere.  But in this version, on the contrary, you use a subtle mixture of young, uncooked herbs including ones like rosemary, sage and thyme that, later in the season, would be too strong to use in this way.  This is not, however, a vegetarian dish, but one that depends on the vibrant interplay of these fresh herbal flavors, the salty savor of prosciutto di parma, and the richness of reduced meat stock.   On our much-used and splattered copy of The Splendid Table, this recipe is annotated: "best in early spring," and "don't stint on the prosciutto!"

From the farmers' market, we brought home a few bunches of spring onions, garlic chives and parsley (as well as  that little pot of basil mentioned above), and then went out to our garden to snip off some of the new leaves of rosemary, sage, thyme, oregano, and tarragon.  You can find most of these on sale at the market too, which is fortunate since, truth be told, we've often had only modest success growing culinary herbs at home (except for oregano, which comes back every year like a trooper and, of course, rosemary, which grows everywhere in town so abundantly that some people use it as a hedge).  You need a total of about two cups of chopped herbs, the majority of which should be milder herbs like parsley and basil but combined with enough of the others to make the whole mixture complex.  You'll also need a lot of regular onion, at least one bunch of spring onion, and one bunch of garlic chives.  Actually the original recipe uses regular garlic, but we like to substitute the garlic chives that are available only at this time of year.

The recipe ideally needs some home-made meat stock (see our post of April 29, 2012).  Chicken stock is fine, but this dish is especially good with Rossetto Kasper’s recipe from this same book, which uses a mixture of beef bones (which Yolo Land and Cattle usually has for sale) and chicken to produce a somewhat darker and richer stock than those made with just chicken.  When we've made stock with her recipe, we call it "splendid stock" in homage to this wonderful cookbook.

Splendid Table's Tagliatelle with Caramelized Onions and Fresh Herbs

• Olive oil
• 4 onions, chopped
• 1 1/2 cups of chicken or chicken/beef stock
• 1 pound tagliatelle (or substitute fettucine, linguini or spaghetti).  This is a great chance to use the noodles available from Pasta Dave at the market. 
• About two cups fresh herbs (basil, parsley, marjoram, oregano, chives, sage, rosemary and thyme, in roughly that order of priority in terms of relative amount.  You don't need all of these, but some mixture of the sweet milder herbs with the stronger ones is essential.)
• 2/3 cup of heavy cream
• 2-3 ounces chopped prosciutto di parma or other good cured ham (such as Bledsoe's from the market)
• 1 bunch spring onions chopped
• 1 bunch garlic chives chopped (or 1-2 cloves of minced garlic)
• 2 cups grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
• salt and pepper to taste  

Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a heavy pan or dutch oven.  Add the onions, salt lightly, stir to coat with oil, then cover and turn down the heat.  Cook covered about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until very soft.  Then uncover, turn up the heat to medium-high, and cook, stirring constantly, until the onions are brown.  You will have made, in effect, a kind of onion compote or marmalade which, as you'll see if you taste it, is surprisingly sweet from just the natural sugar in the reduced onions.

If you're using regular garlic instead of the garlic chives, add it when the onions are almost brown.  Then add the stock, and scrap off any brown glaze from the pan.  Let the sauce simmer until the stock has reduced by half.


Rinse, de-stem, and coarsely chop the herbs, spring onions and garlic chives.  Chop the prosciutto.  Combine all these in a bowl and reserve.


Everything up to this point can be done a few hours in advance if you wish.  

To finish the dish:

Cook your pasta until it is just barely tender but still a bit firm.
Reheat the onion mixture and add the cream.  When your pasta has just been drained, stir the herb mixture into the sauce and stir: you don't want to cook the herbs, just warm them.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.
  

Toss the cooked pasta with the sauce, adding about a cup of cheese, and a very small amount of the pasta cooking water if it seems necessary.


Plate and pass the rest of the cheese at the table.
 

Pheasant and asparagus

The Sherdos have had a busy and, at times, difficult winter. Although we cook in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, we haven’t had that much to say about it.  Our weekly Saturday pilgrimages to the farmers' market have continued to be a source of solace and joy.  But we have not rallied ourselves into words.  Fortunately, after the winter of our discontent comes a glorious spring.  Is any season in Davis more spirit-lifting than this one?  In an initial celebration of the season, we offer a wintery dish with a spring sidedish.

Last week, Chowdown Farms were offering for sale what they call Guinea Pheasant, which is something you don't see every day, not even from them. There's some complex terminological ambiguity here that we're unable to resolve, but we suspect that this "domesticated game bird" is the same as, or at least similar to, what we had more often heard referred to as guinea hen or guinea fowl.  A domesticated game bird is, in any case, already a hybrid in which some game fowl (such as a pheasant) is bred with some other kind of barnyard bird, something that has been done for centuries.  Joan Thirk's history of Food in Early Modern England claims that Henry VIII first introduced the labor-intensive process of breeding pheasants into England in the early sixteenth century.  All we know is that we like it, so call it what you will. 


In his poem in praise of a great house, “To Penshurst,” the Renaissance poet Ben Jonson, famous for his huge appetite, claims, improbably, that the game and produce at Penshurst desire their own consumption.  

The purpled pheasant with the speckled side;
The painted partridge lies in every field, 
And for thy mess is willing to be killed.  

In his poem "Inviting a Friend for Supper," Jonson tantalizes his imagined guest by speaking

Of partridge, pheasant, woodcock, of which some
May yet be there.

And in Jonson’s play The Alchemist, a character with the wonderful name of Sir Epicure Mammon imagines that the great wealth he hopes to achieve will mean that even his “foot-boy shall eat pheasants.”  We too had tended to think of pheasants and other game birds as luxuries — and yet here they are at our own farmers' market, ready to eat for a weekday dinner!

As we’ve mentioned here before, we eat less meat since coming to Davis but we tend to be on more intimate terms with the meat that we do eat.  To cook this particular bird, we followed the instructions of Judy Rodgers, from The Zuni Café Cookbook, for cooking what she calls a "guinea hen."  With this bird, unlike a chicken, you first have to break it down, because the breasts cook very quickly and it is easy to overcook them.  

Chowdown’s birds are frozen.  Obviously, you need to thaw them before cutting them, but you can do that in a basin of cold water on market day if you wish.  It’s also easier to butcher a bird that is not entirely thawed. Rodgers explains that pulling is as important a part of butchery as is cutting—and you need a very sharp knife.  Here are her instructions:  “Make a long incision in the skin between each leg and the breast meat, then tug the leg away from the carcass. Fold it all the way back to pop the ball joint, then fold even farther and use the tip of your knife to carve out the lentil-shaped muscle know as the ‘pope's nose.’ Then tug at the leg as you cut through the remaining muscle and skin. To extricate the meaty wings, tug the wing straight out and make a circular cut around the shoulder joint. Twist the wing, straining the tip of your knife. Continue to twist and fold the wing back, cutting through the remaining muscle, sinew, and skin. To remove the breast meat, first make a deep clean cut with the knife flat against each side of the sternum. Next, tugging the breast away from the collar-bone, use the tip of your knife to make a shallow cut along each arc of collarbone (the wishbone). Pulling the breast away from the sternum, make a series of little cuts flat against the sternum and under the wishbone to progressively free the breast as you go. Repeat with the other breast.”

We are not sure we’ve ever correctly identified or captured the “pope’s nose.”  And the breasts are hard to get in one tidy piece.  But following these directions we have managed to secure 6 pieces of the bird.  We save the carcass for stock.  As Rodgers asks, we salt and pepper the pieces a day before cooking them.  

Roasted Guinea Hen with Bay Leaves, Madeira and Dates

• 1 Chowdown Farms Guinea Pheasant

• Salt

• 3/4 cup guinea hen stock (which we make from the carcass leftover after removing the pieces) or chicken stock

• 1 tablespoon olive oil

• 6 bay leaves

• 2 whole cloves or allspice berries

• 2 small sticks of cinnamon

• 1/2 cup Madeira

• 1 strip of orange zest

• 4 dates, pitted and halved. (Of course, we use Siegfried dates from the market.  Rodgers calls for 8 dates.  But if you use the luscious Medjools, this will make the sauce far too sweet.  Even with the smaller more complexly flavored Barhi dates, the sauce seems too sweet to us with 8 dates.)

1.  When ready to cook: Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Pat the guinea hen pieces dry.

2.  Warm the olive oil in a large ovenproof skillet over medium heat. When the oil is hot enough to sizzle on contact, arrange

the pieces of meat skin side down in a single layer. Reduce the heat only if the oil starts to smoke. Leave untouched, to set a golden crust, about 5 minutes. Turn off the heat. 

3.  Turn over the leg and wing pieces. Remove the breasts and set aside. Pour off all but a film of fat, then tuck the bay leaves, clove or allspice berries, and cinnamon under the legs. Set the pan in the lower half of your oven and roast for 15 minutes maximum.  It may well be done in 10.

4.  Add the breast pieces, skin side up, and roast until just cooked through, another 8-10 minutes—but as little as 5.

5.  Remove the pan from the oven.  If the fat in the pan seems excessive, you should pour some off, but we have not needed this step working with the Chowdown Farms birds. Add the Madeira and orange zest and set over medium heat. Swirl the pan and use a wooden spoon to scrape the sides and rub the pan with the orange zest.

6.  After the Madeira has boiled hard for about 5 seconds, add the stock and the dates. Continue swirling and stirring. Taste every few seconds and pull away from the heat once the sauce has a little body and concentrated flavor. Keep in mind that the pan will continue cooking and reducing the sauce until it is served, so be prepared to work quickly. If the sauce does get too strong or thick, add a few drops of water to correct.

7.  Distribute the meat among plates and spoon the sauce over it. 

 
 On this occasion, we served our hen, or pheasant, with roasted asparagus and a barley pilaf.

 ROASTED ASPARAGUS

As we mentioned almost a year ago, we actually first got the idea for this blog when a stranger at the market asked us: "what do you do with all that asparagus?"  It is true we eat it constantly while it is in season, which it has just come into here in Davis.

With this dish, since the oven is already turned up high, this is a great opportunity to roast asparagus while the meat rests and we make the pan sauce.  

Although we like to roast asparagus, we have learned through trial and error that the trick is to dry the asparagus very carefully before putting it in the oven so that it doesn’t steam.  We’ve also learned that asparagus from the market cooks more quickly than any recipe we encounter suggests that it will.  We wash the spears, trim the ends (but don’t bother to peel), and pat them dry with a towel.  Then we toss them with olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and place them in one layer on a baking sheet.  That goes in the very hot oven for 8-10 minutes.  We like to turn it once for even browning on the tips.  We’ve also roasted asparagus successfully in the toaster oven.