Cooking Digest 6/8-6/15

Below the fold: Orange Pull-Apart Loaf, my own Deconstructed BLT Tart, Gallopinto, Potato Pancakes, and Gingered Swiss Chard Omelet.

Orange Pull-Apart Loaf

This week started with a bang--and my kitchen looked like the aftermath.  On Friday I finally executed my cunning plan to make the Deconstructed BLT Tart that fulfilled Paul's request for bacon crust and used fresh, seasonal veggies (full win: using veggies from my CSA share and backyard garden patch).  This recipe is based on a bacon crust I found on Teh Google (which was down but is now back up again) and David Lebovitz's French Tomato Tart, divine as is but a worthy vehicle for my bacon efforts.

At the same time, I was making Serious Eats' Orange Pull-Apart Loaf for my neighbors.  While successful, I did not have much fun making this recipe.  I used the weight measurements, since that's the kind of gal I am--and kept adding heaping tablespoonful of flour after heaping tablespoonful because the dough kept puddling at the bottom of the mixing bowl during both kneading cycles.  My experience is that sweet doughs need to be stickier than regular doughs, but there's no way the dough was meant to be as sticky as it was.  The baker lives in Colorado, so my guess is that her kitchen is nowhere near as humid as mine.  But it came out well!  I'm very glad I trusted my instincts about what the dough texture should be.

Also from Serious Eats, I made Gallopinto.  Other than being too salty (I'd cut down the salt for the beans to 1 Tbs and add none to the rice), it was a great project and well worth the time-lapse process.  If you like rice and beans at all, you should really try this--and it tastes as good as leftovers as the first day.    I love throwing some into the skillet with a Niman Ranch chorizo sausage to cook alongside it--good stuff!  And I happily gobbled up the bell pepper half used to cook the rice, which was tasty.  I plan to use this method for cooking black beans, too, since it's just as efficient and better-tasting than the method I've been using from 3 Guys from Miami's Moros y Cristianos (which makes a VAT of black beans and rice, great for BBQs and large gatherings).

And I had some Yukon Gold potatoes to use up and half an onion left from making the Gallopinto rice, so I used both in this German Potato Pancakes recipe from my favorite reviewed recipe website, Allrecipes.com.  It came out beautifully!  I followed the recipe to a T, except I never skin organic potatoes, and I've been toasting the leftovers to eat with a fried egg for breakfast--it makes 6 large servings.  Yum!  Remember, kids, that you don't have to worry about potatoes browning due to oxidation when you're just going to brown them in the pan anyway!

Swiss Chard Omelet with local strawberries, a perfect summer dinner.

Since my CSA is giving out shares, I've been enjoying having mustard greens, mizuna, butter lettuce, and arugula to mix into mesclun as a basis for salad.  To this I've been adding other fresh veg (radishes, carrots, pea shoots, fresh herbs) along with the beans I had left over from making Gallopinto.  Since I never get more than 4 leaves of Swiss chard with my half-share, I often make Gingered Swiss Chard Omelets, which are very easy and quite good, especially when all the ingredients except the ginger are local!http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/05/gallopinto-nicaraguan-rice-and-beans-recipe.html?ref=search