Cucumber-Basil Egg Salad

I have a certain penchant for egg salad. My mother would rarely make it, but, oh goodness, when she did...
Heaven.
Eggy, mayonnaise-y, heaven.
I rarely make it myself, particularly after I saw just how much mayo went into it. Also, after years of bad deli experiences, my longing for it fizzled and slowly died.
But then I found myself with a bunch of hard boiled eggs on my hands. In a fit of "hardboiling" for the "Fish and Broad Bean Salad" recipe, I had boiled an entire carton of eggs and I was left with many many hard boiled leftovers with little to do with them.
If there was ever a time to justify egg salad...
But my fears about mayo overdose remained and so I trawled the internet searching for an egg salad that downplayed the white stuff and front-loaded other ingredients.
And Epicurious.com came to my rescue. Their recipe for an egg salad infused with cucumber and basil seemed exactly what I was looking for. Yes, it still called for 1/2 cup of mayonnaise, but I could work with this. After a little tweaking, I found myself in the possession of a fresh "healthier" version of egg salad that was absolutely phenomenal. Enough mayo had gone into the recipe to evoke memories of the mayo-drenched creations of my past, but supplementing some of the mayo with yogurt, plus the addition of cucumber, basic, and celery, gave it a much more refined feeling.

This recipe may not satisfy everyone's yen for egg salad (after all, I ended up only putting 3 eggs into it), but for me, it was the perfect balance.

Serves 2


Ingredients

3 hard-cooked eggs, diced
3/4 cup seeded, diced cucumbers (about 1/2 cucumber)
1/4 cup minced shallots
1/2 cup sliced green onions (green part only)
2 celery stalks (chopped)
3 tablespoons lightly packed chopped fresh basil (I used probably about 5 tbsp)
1/4 cup mayonnaise (I also used a blend between regular mayo and a onion/mustard mayo I had found at Tesco)
1/4 cup Greek yogurt
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1 teaspoon white pepper

Method

Gently combine the eggs, cucumbers, shallots, celery, green onions, and basil in a medium bowl. Stir in the mayonnaise, yogurt, salt, and peppers. 

Store in the refrigerator for up to three days.

Spicy Smoky S'mores Bars

Oh s'mores. Simple yet enduringly delicious. And, surprisingly perhaps, quintessentially American. I attribute this to the lack of the campfire concept in Britain. Although I haven't been camping here myself, I have had enough North American friends go off packing into the wilds of Cornwall or Somerset to come back and bemoan the lack of a proper campfire. Apparently it's just "not done" in England. Tis a shame. For without campfires there cannot be a proper s'more experience. 

But it's not just the campfire. Not really. No, this country will never appreciate the s'more until graham crackers are accepted here. Because honestly, when a recipe (if you can even call the directions for s'mores that) calls for only three ingredients, you'd better have all three. I don't care what they say about using biscuits (the British kind, mind you), tea cakes, cookies, what have you. There is something strangely unique about the graham cracker. And its presence (or lack thereof) will make or break any good s'more recipe.

I digress.

I miss s'mores, sure. But I hadn't thought about them in years. Not until a recently published article on Slate talked about the wonders of cooking shows and their potential to get you to, well, cook. Now, I haven't seen the show which this recipe comes from (Ann Thornton, we salute you) but this recipe is living proof that not just shows can get you to cook, articles about cooking shows can get you to cook equally as well (ok, well, maybe I'm a captive audience, but still). As soon as the article mentioned something about s'mores bars with chipotle chile, there was no going back. As the article said: I had to make them.

So I did.

But alas. I am in a graham-cracker free country. The fact that usually suppresses any lingering urge in me to make s'mores. But no. This was too delicious-looking a recipe to pass up. I would press on. And so I found myself trawling the biscuit aisle of Tesco, vainly in search of something that resembled the quintessential American graham cracker. In the end, I decided on a mixture of butter and ginger biscuits. Yes, yes, I know. Twas not a graham cracker. Biscuits are too sugary- too full of butter. They don't have the glorious thin "crispness" of the graham cracker. But desperate times, people. Desperate times.

And did I mention these things are ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS? Oh goodness. You can't get enough of them. They feature the same magical simple goodness as original s'mores, the kind that leaves you wondering how just a few ingredients can turn into utter bliss. These things are dangerous, I warn you now.

Made even more so by the fact that the recipe is simple as pie. Despite lack of graham, the biscuit base did just as well (I mean, honestly, they're biscuits. They were not going to taste horrible). True, it was not the original s'more all Americans know and love, but these bars are so more-ish (to use a British phrase) anyway that you forgive them their shortcomings. True s'mores will have to wait for American soil, but in the meantime, these will do quite nicely.

Ingredients
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, melted, plus more, softened, for pan
18 plain graham crackers (about 2 packages) (or, if in Britain, a combination of ginger and butter biscuits, probably around 15-20 in total)
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
2 cups milk chocolate chips
1 cup (or 1 bar) dark chocolate (I used Green & Black's Maya Gold chocolate)
3/4 teaspoon chipotle pepper powder
1/2 teaspoon ancho chile power
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
3 1/2 cups mini-marshmallows

The graham cracker (ok, biscuit) crust

Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (or approximately 175 C). Line the bottom and sides of a 9 by 13-inch baking pan with foil. You want to leave about 4 inches of overhang on the 2 opposite sides. These are going to serve as your handles to remove the bars from the pan in 1 piece, so make sure that there is enough of the overhang for you to have a solid grip. Grease the foil well with the softened butter.

In your food processor (or in a plastic bag), grind the graham crackers into a fine meal (you need 2 cups). In a large bowl, combine your crumbs with the sugar, sea salt and melted butter. The mixture should look and feel like wet sand. Set aside a heaping 1/2 cup of the crumb mixture for the topping. Evenly press the remaining crumb mixture into the bottom the foil-lined pan. Pop your crust into the oven and bake until it is golden brown and your kitchen smells of graham crackers, 12 to 15 minutes. Remove the crust from the oven and allow it to cool on a rack or on a dishtowel on your counter.

The bars, pre-broiler

Melt the milk chocolate in a saucepan over low heat, stirring continuously until fully melted. Do not turn up the heat to hurry this process, you must keep it on low. Alternately, you can microwave the chocolate on low power, stirring after 2 minutes. Once the chocolate is fully melted, it's time to add various chile powders, if using, and stir it in completely.

Preheat the broiler.

Pour the melted chocolate over the cooled graham cracker crust. Spread the chocolate evenly over the crust with a butter knife. Sprinkle the marshmallows over the chocolate and press them lightly into the chocolate. Sprinkle the reserved crumb mixture over and in between the marshmallows so that you cannot see the chocolate peaking through the marshmallows. Broil the bars 6 inches from the flame until the marshmallows are golden brown, 1 to 2 minutes.

Refrigerate the bars until the chocolate is hard, 2 hours or so. Grab the ends of the foil liner and lift the bars out of the pan in 1 piece. Move to a cutting board and cut into 24 squares.

Kibbeh

Alternative grains. It basically breathes the word "hippie". But they've become the latest bandwagon to jump on, culinarily speaking. Quinoa, bulgur, cous cours, farro, wheat berries (seriously?), they all have become familiar items in your local supermarket all of a sudden. But apart from cous cous, I had rarely cooked with any of them.

But, on a crazy whim, I had recently decided to attempt tabbouleh, a dish fundamentally based on bulgur wheat. So, off I went, purchasing the requisite alternative grain. The dish was a hit, but now I was left with all this...well...alternative grain. Now, I like tabbouleh as much as the next person, but I certainly wasn't going to be eating it straight for the next three weeks to use it up. And I had no idea what else I could make with it.

Well, thanks needs to be given, once again, to Martha Schulman, who includes this recipe in her "Cleaning out the pantry" section of her column. Although, for some reason, her pantry seems to include every single alternative grain on the planet. Well, I suppose she is the writer behind a "healthy recipe" column. It does make a certain amount of sense.  

So, kibbeh (which strangely almost rhymes with tabbouleh...is there a bizarre rule of "-eh" endings when it comes to bulgur?). I had no idea what it was but it used bulgur and therefore was right up my alley.

It turns out, it's a wonderful hearty salad (although she makes it into little appetizer balls, an extra touch I wasn't going to do) with fabulous middle eastern flavors. It's also super easy. Win. Win. The only thing that takes some time is the soaking of the bulgur itself (just pour boiling water over it and let it stand an hour). Now, I was tempted to try and skimp on the timing, but a taste test after 35 minutes or so, I was convinced to give it the full hour treatment. Schulman's recipe also lacked oomph, so I boosted some flavors to make it a more aromatic salad. It's great as a main course salad without anything else, but if you want to make it extra hearty, throw some chopped chorizo on it or put it on a bed of salad leaves, and you're in business.

Ingredients

3/4 cup fine bulgur

2 garlic cloves, halved, green shoots removed

Salt to taste

1/2 cup walnuts, lightly toasted and finely chopped

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1/2 cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley

3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh mint

Freshly ground pepper to taste

1 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon allspice

1/4 teaspoon cloves

1/4 cup dried cranberries

3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Method
Place the bulgur in a bowl, add salt to taste and pour on boiling water to cover by 1/2 inch. Let sit for one hour, then drain and squeeze out excess water.

Place the garlic in a mortar and pestle with a generous pinch of salt, and mash to a paste. Stir into the bulgur. Add the walnuts, olive oil, parsley, mint, pepper, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, cranberries, and  the lemon juice. Moisten your hands and knead the mixture for a couple of minutes, then allow to sit for 15 to 30 minutes.

Serve either on its own as a salad or roll into small balls and place on top of lettuce leaves to serve as appetizers.

Yield: Four to Six

Spinach and Asparagus Pasta with Chorizo

Do you ever have one of those moments where something comes out nothing at all like you planned?
Yeah. Me too.

This dish, in fact, is the result of one of those moments.

Now, nominally, this was supposed to be "Lasagna with Asparagus and Chives", based on the latest Martha Schulman entry on the New York Times.

But, as you'll probably notice in the picture above, there's a stunning lack of lasagna noodles. And also chives. Trust me on this one. Chives feature nowhere in the above picture.

You see, I'm not usually a lasagna person. It's usually way too dense and rich and overwhelming (and usually with way too much tomato sauce, but let's not open that particular can of worms at the moment). But when I saw this version, I thought "This is a lasagna I can get behind". It looked light and summery with not too much sauce (no tomatoes in sight! Just a nice light ricotta) and perfect for a Sunday dinner. This plan was made all the better as I even had (or at least thought I had) lasagna noodles already in my cupboard.

So off I trundled to Tesco, picking up the few things the recipe called for. Asparagus? Check. Basil? Why not? Ricotta? Sure! Why not throw in some spinach, just to be fun and daring? Chives? Well, alas, Tesco was out of chives, but as I had already collected my basil, I thought its absence surely wouldn't hurt anything. And that was all. I proudly walked right past the pasta section, confident in my well-stocked cupboard.

Well, I'm sure you can see where this is heading. To my surprise (and dismay), as I rooted around in my seemingly-lasagnaless pantry, I remembered I had thrown out my noodles some months back when an ant colony had decided to take up residence in our kitchen. While thankfully the ants were now gone, unfortunately so too were my lasagna noodles. Which, it seemed, were basic prerequisites for a lasagna.

No matter. I had other types of pasta. It would serve. And it did! Actually, the whole dish worked out quite well. The ricotta sauce as advocated by Martha Schulman served just as well on non-lasagna noodles (as one would expect) and combined with shredded basil, raw spinach, and some chorizo thrown in for good measure, it was a dish that was surprisingly more-ish.

So thus, while I can claim inspiration by the inimitable Recipes for Health, I have to call this recipe an original.


Ingredients

1 pound asparagus, trimmed

1/2 cup ricotta

2 garlic clovse, finely minced or (preferably) pureed

3 tablespoons chopped basil

1 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1/2 pound lumache pasta

1/4 cup (1 ounce) freshly grated Parmesan or pecorino romano (or a combination)

1 bag, washed spinach

1/2 tsp each of red pepper flakes, oregano, thyme, and rosemary

6 ounces Spanish chorizo, diced

Method

Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil, salt generously and add the asparagus. Meanwhile, fill a bowl with cold water. Boil thin stalks for three minutes, thicker stalks for four to six minutes until tender. Using tongs, remove the asparagus from the pot and transfer to the bowl of cold water. Drain and cut on the diagonal into 3/4-inch lengths.

Add the pasta to the boiling water, and boil until cooked al dente -- firm to the bite. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, combine the ricotta with the oil, garlic, and spices. When the noodles are done, remove 1/2 cup of the pasta water, and add to the bowl with the ricotta. Mix together well. In a large bowl, add the spinach and the asparagus, basil and Parmesan or pecorino to the bowl. Mix the ricotta mixture into the spinach and asparagus. Drain the lasagna, and toss with everything. Serve at once.

Yield: Serves four.

Snickerdoodles

Although I have no idea where the name for these cookies comes from, the best way to describe them is like sugar cookies with a hug. Honestly, I have absolutely no idea what makes them taste so good. Take a sugar cookies and roll it in cinnamon sugar. Sounds good, absolutely. But no. They're delicious. Scrumtulescent, I believe would be the word for them. These are classic suburban cookies at their finest.

And they're perfect for baking when strangers come round. That is, when you're not sure whether the recipient likes chocolate or is allergic to nuts or one of the host of other maladies that strike chefs down everywhere. Granted, they won't be on a celiac's top ten list, but apart from them and the vegans, it's hard to find someone who won't like these.

And so for such classic Americana delicacies, there's no better place to turn than the institution that is The Joy of Cooking, now in its 3 billionth edition.

But honestly, if you make these once, you'll have the recipe memorized. It's just that easy. And because I insist on making everything complicated, I actually threw a little pumpkin pie spice into the mix as well (that is, a blend of allspice, cloves, and nutmeg). I'm not sure if it did anything, but with or without, these cookies are definite crowd-pleasers.

Ingredients

2 cups all purpose (or plain) flour
2 tsp. cream of tartar
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
Optional: 2 tsp. Pumpkin pie spices (allspice, cloves, and nutmeg)

For cinnamon sugar topping
1/4 cup sugar
4 tsp. ground cinnamon

Method 


Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease or line 2 cookies sheets. Whisk together the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl.

In a different bowl, beat the butter and sugar until well combined. Add the eggs and beat again.

Finally, stir in the flour mixture.

Now combine the sugar and cinnamon to make your topping. Shape the dough into 1 1/4 inch balls, roll in the cinnamon sugar, and arrange about 2 1/2 inches apart on the cookie sheets. Bake, 1 sheet at a time, until the cookies are light golden brown on the edges, about 12- 14 minutes. Let stand to briefly, then remove to a rack to cool.

Makes about 30 cookies.