Culinary Smackdown: Battle Literary Food

Our March Culinary Smackdown winner, Katie from Taste & See Cincinnati, challenged us to Battle "Literary" Food this month, leaving plenty of wiggle room for our entries to be inspired by fiction, memoirs, or any non-cookbooks. See what Katie's come up with for this battle here, and check the comments section for links to the other fine entries.

Before I'd managed to zero in a book, I stumbled across some fresh favas at Madison's in Findlay Market, and an idea was born. I snatched some up, eager to play around with a spring ingredient I've never worked with before, and picked up a bottle of Chianti on my way home. Neither would have gone to waste, but I was glad to confirm my recollection that the movie The Silence of the Lambs was based on a book, by Thomas Harris. I confess I've never read the book, and was probably one of the last people in America to see the movie, afraid it would creep me out.

I promise you there is nothing creepy about this dinner I made last night. It is most assuredly free of liver (of a census taker or any other critter) and is instead a celebration of spring produce. My fava beans and a nice Chianti had a splendid supporting cast, including ramps, morels, and fiddlehead ferns, also from Madison's.

I'd never cooked with any of them before. So step one was to read up on the basics of preparing fresh favas and fiddleheads. I came across a couple of different ways of extricating the fava beans.

First, you "unzip" the pod to get at the favas, which are similar to lima beans.

But your prep work is far from done at that juncture. Next you have to get the beans themselves out of their "waxy" outer casing. Some people peel away the casing. I decided to go with a method where you dunk the beans in boiling salted water for 30 seconds, drain and shock them in cold water, and then try to "slip" them out of the casings.

The blanch-first method worked pretty well for me. To open the casings I just used my fingernails (which I wished I hadn't cut the night before). Alas, I did not always manage to slip the beans out whole. These are delicate little things that easily split in half. Still, it remained a time-consuming process to free all the favas. English peas, which I was also using, are lot less work, even though they and their pods are much smaller. Here's a comparison shot (with not-yet-freed favas).

Piddlehead ferns always make me smile. They just look so darn fun and unlikely.

I found this handy primer on how to prep fiddleheads, but mine had no chaff to speak of or unfurled ends longer than 2 inches, so I washed them, patted them dry with paper towel, and figured I was good to go. The most important tip I came across was to make sure not to cook them more than 3-4 minutes. I'm not sure how old mine were, but I cooked them less than that and some of them were a bit bitter.

Ramps, sometimes called wild leeks, look a lot like tiny scallions and give off a pungent garlicky onion flavor. There are two good reasons to use them soon after you find them: 1) they are delicate and will taste better and 2) you will be able to smell them not only in the refrigerator but also outside the refrigerator if you try to store them for a while. I used three, slicing the white portion near the bulb thinly.

I figured it couldn't hurt to use the ramp leaves too, along with the leaves from some lovely radishes I'd found at Northside Farmers Market.

I sliced the accompanying radishes, shucked some peas, made thick slices out of the morels, cut some asparagus, stripped some fresh thyme, and ended up with a whole lot to cook with.

I had in mind my own personal pasta primavera, so I cooked off some whole wheat penne and set forth to cook – but not overcook – my bounty of tender young spring produce. I started with one non-herbivore ingredient, a single slice of lamb bacon. I swear I wasn't even thinking about the tie-in to the title of this book/movie when I purchased it, at the new Dutch's Larder in Hyde Park. (Their grand opening is this Friday, featuring Belgian style beers from Rockmill Brewery in Lancaster, Ohio, and the lamb bacon in question is just one of the items they offer from Smoking Goose Meatery in Indianapolis, whose products are also available at Jungle Jim's and served at Enoteca Emilia in O'Bryonville.)

If you've been following this blog, you probably know I'm always curious to try something new, and there are certain questions I am powerless to say no to. Would you like a loaf of homemade bread? Yes. Would you like to try some local charcuterie? Yes. Would you like to go to a pig-tasting dinner? Yes. Never having contemplated the concept of lamb bacon before, as soon as that option was displayed before me, the answer was another immediate Yes.

So I rendered (and removed) the bacon with a sprig of fresh thyme, added some butter to the drippings, and started gently cooking my unfamiliar veg in the order I guessed would be best to get them done, but not overdone. I overdid the "braised" radishes, and would probably have been better off not slicing them. Sometimes you just have to figure things out on the fly, and that's what I did, removing what seemed ready when I still had other veggies to add to the skillet.

A splash of sherry vinegar, some salt and pepper, a drizzle of Chianti, and another dab of butter or two all went in at some point as well (upon reflection, some lemon zest or juice would have been worthy additions). Finally, I added the penne to the pan, along with all its assorted partners, swirled in some pasta water, pronounced my dinner done, and was glad for a glass of Chianti.

Into a bowl it went, dolloped with some herbed goat cheese. And one of the best accompaniments any spring dinner could have: a slice of homemade ciabatta courtesy of Jeff of A Dork and His Pork, who has previously graced our Culinary Smackdown. Jeff brought smiles to many Cincy friends and bloggers Sunday morning by playing bread baking angel, and I'm honored he included me. Let's just say that if he ever opens "Sticky" I will be first in line.

Wishing you all a bountiful spring, and courage to try cooking (or tasting) ingredients and dishes that are new to you. Seize the season. And if you're lucky enough to have a generous angel of the baking or farmer ilk in your midst, say Yes!

Team Eggplant Does Eggplant - Our Entry for the Culinary Smackdown

Team Eggplant finally got 'er done, despite a couple of delays and disappointments. Before heading to the river to join friend Cindie and her husband, Odie, to cook, I made a quick trip to Findlay Market Saturday morning to replace the sausages and tasso that Cindie thawed – and forgot – the previous weekend when our cooking plans got derailed.

And I was glad I did! In a city where German heritage – and love of sausage – runs deep, Kroeger + Sons Meats makes some of the best – and most diverse – sausages you can find. We had tried their Parma (an Italian-style sausage with red pepper) on our last trip, so I picked up a couple more of those, along with a linguiça (Portuguese sausage) and this tasso (a spicy Cajun ham-like cured pork).

Even better, I found two quarts of local blackberries at Madison’s Findlay produce stand, which, despite her dislike of the seeds in blackberries, Cindie had agreed to turn into a pie. She assembled it in no time, then popped it into the oven of her brand new stove, which we would give a good workout before the day was over.

In the veg department, I had plenty of peeling and slicing to do for my two dishes. One would grow up to be Stuffed Eggplant. True to my namesake, I innovated this one as I went. While the pie was in the oven, I roasted these halved eggplants, then removed the softened innards to add to a mixture of linguiça and Parma sausages I’d removed from their casings and cooked with onions and shallots.

“How about adding some tomato sauce?” I asked Cindie. We debated the merits of tomato sauce vs. paste for this use, and settled on sauce. As she pulled a can from her well-stocked cupboard, Cindie suggested we add rice, so that went in as well. I chopped some parsley and tossed in some cheese, then refilled the eggplant shells, and these puppies were ready for a quick trip back into the oven to warm them up and melt the cheese.

The other dish I had my sights set on was a riff on this recipe for Eggplant, Oyster, and Tasso Gratin I found on epicurious.com by New Orleans chef Susan Spicer published in The Southern Foodways Alliance Community Cookbook. Cindie and Odie love oysters, and I thought this would be a slam-dunk in the approval department until Cindie pointed out to me that July does not have an “R” in it. Although this adage may be less true than it once was, I knew it was best to come up with an alternate plan and decided to go with shrimp.

For this preparation, I decided to use the variety of smaller eggplants I’d picked up at Hyde Park Farmers Market last weekend.

As vibrant and varied as the colors of their skins may be, when I peeled, sliced, and sautéed them with onion, shallot, and red pepper, the only difference among them I could detect was that some cooked more quickly than others, depending on how firm and ripe they were.

For those of you who’ve asked about these Egyptian/Turkish orange eggplants I posted about earlier, I confess to being a sucker for cute “baby” vegetables and exotic varieties.

They were very hard when I brought them home, so I left them unrefrigerated for a few days, during which their green stripes faded into overall oranginess. I spotted a recipe for stuffing these orange lovelies, but mine were only about the size of a golf ball and would not have been worth the effort to try to stuff. I sliced them thinly, hoping for a little color and assured by reports that their skin would be edible (unlike the bitter skins of many purple eggplant). Leaving the skin on worked just fine in this preparation.

Susan Spicer’s recipe calls for a white sauce that incorporates the liquor/juice from shucked oysters. Since we weren’t going the oyster route, I brought some bottled clam juice (one of my go-to substitutions to add seafood flavors when I don’t have seafood stock on hand) – and put Cindie in charge. Cindie always makes her white sauce in the microwave, and it always turns out perfectly! As with any technique, years of practice help :) Someday I’d love to do a step-by-step post of how she does it, but on this occasion, I was happy to leave it in her capable hands to adapt this recipe to her tried-and-true methods and the ingredients we had on hand.

We didn’t end up with a lot of white sauce for the dish we were making. So it’s just as well I ignored the directions in the original recipe to put some in the bottom of the casserole dish before adding the eggplant. We spread some of the white sauce over the the sautéed eggplant-tasso-onion combo, then before reheating, added shrimp, the rest of the white sauce, and a crumbly mixture of bread crumbs, parmesan, parsley, melted butter, and olive oil.

At this point in the afternoon, we’d done enough prep work and people were starting to get hungry, so I decided to forget about another dish I’d had in mind, and we moved on to Odie’s contribution. As soon as Cindie and I started talking about reviving the Culinary Smackdown and attempting Battle Eggplant, Odie piped up: “Poor Man’s Shrimp.” It’s a floured and deep-fried preparation he and Cindie had eaten at the old F+N Steakhouse in Northern Kentucky before it went out of business. Odie loved it and worked with Cindie to come up with a way to replicate it at home. F+N served theirs with cocktail sauce and tartar sauce to pump up the illusion you’re eating shrimp. Cindie wedged and floured the eggplant ahead and refrigerated them.

Cindie hates the residual smell of deep frying in the house. But we ran into a glitch trying to use the fryer outside. With four air conditioners going, breakers blew. Fortunately we at least managed to get the back refrigerator online again. We won’t talk about the future of the electric golf cart . . . Here’s Odie, aka The Frymaster, at work once we brought the fryer inside.

And here are some of those Poor Man's Shrimp fresh out of the fryer.

I’d found these burgundy okra at Hyde Park Farmers Market the weekend our cooking date was postponed.

So we had Odie fry them up as well.

We also broke out the pickled eggplant Cindie and I had prepped two weeks earlier. I love all things pickled (or so I thought), and was inspired by this Italian recipe. But Cindie and I didn't follow it. Instead of putting the pickles in a glass jar, we used an airtight plastic container, and we were wary of following the instructions that said to dunk the eggplant in the boiling pickling liquid and then just pour off the liquid. So we let them soak in the fridge. Odie got into the action as well, hard-boiling some eggs to pickle with the eggplant. Don't let this photo fool you. Despite Cindie's photo-styling efforts, none of it tasted like much. Although I did learn one of Cindie's secrets: She always boils a pickling mixture before she adds it to veg, even something like that summertime favorite of tomatoes, onions, and green peppers.

The entrees, however, turned out well enough, even though, as usual, we made way too much food. Here's the gratin.

And here are the stuffed eggplants.

But the best thing was probably that blackberry pie.

Thanks to all for playing, for visiting all the fine entries, and for supporting this revival of the Culinary Smackdown. A big thanks to Chickory for our new badge! Hope you all had as much fun as I did. I'll be back later in the week to recap the entries and announce our winner.