Old English Crab Canapes

This is a classic recipe. The kind you'd be likely to find in old church and community cookbooks (which, who knows, might be where this particular version is actually from). My Nana made these for my uncle's wedding, and I copied down the recipe from her hand-written card. It's the kind of thing I have a feeling tons of people remember eating, but have perhaps forgotten about lately. It gets mentioned a fair amount on this Chowhound thread in relationship to one of its main ingredients, Kraft Old English Cheese.

If you're not familiar with the processed cheese spread, it comes in a little glass jar. One commentor calls it "un-Chow worthy" but then an avalanche (okay maybe not an avalanche, maybe a snowdrift) of other commentors chime in to say that every time they make it, it goes over like gangbusters. That it's always a hit. That everyone loves it. So let's do away with the food snobbery for a moment here and pay homage to those classic American recipes that revolve around opening jars and combing the contents. Because sometimes, it just works.

Don't balk at the idea of using Kraft Old English Cheese, either. It's a classic ingredient in that other throw-back, the cheese ball. It's what lends the creaminess to the concoction, and is as vital to this recipe as hot dogs are to pigs-in-a-blanket. If you're really feeling fancy, I supposed you could even substitute an artisanal cheese spread for the Kraft Old English kind. It would be like using Dijon mustard in place of the Frenches for the aforementioned pigs. But I prefer to keep it real with Kraft.

Old English Crab Canapes
From my Nana's recipe card

1/4 lb butter, softened
1 1/2 tablespoons mayo
6 oz jar Kraft Old English Cheese spread
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt
6 oz crab meat
Dash lemon juice
8 English muffins, split

Mix butter, cheese, mayo, garlic, salt, crab meat and lemon juice.

Spread on English muffins and cut into quarters. Freeze.

To serve: place frozen canapes under the broiler until they bubble.

Makes 64

Black Bean and Rice Bake

It's a fact that I LOVE looking through cookbooks. R, predictably, does not share my obsession. But I've unilaterally decided that he and I are going to make a concerted effort to start packing our lunches more often for work, and the result of an informal pole which I conduced at the house of my friends M and A in DC concluded that baked casseroles are a great way to do that. Bake them up for dinner one night, stretch them out into lunch for the next couple of days. So I badgered him into choosing the first casserole.

Which reminds me of another anecdote. (Why can I never spell that word right on the first try?) Have you ever watched that kind-of-horrible show Hoarders? I hate it. Hits too close to home. Besides, I'm not a hoarder, I'm a collector. And yes, I realize the people on the show say that as well, but in my case it's true. It is! Anyway, we were watching one night and one of the 'organizational specialists' or whatever they're called pulled out a cabinet-full of take-out containers that the subject had amassed over years. When asked why she insisted on keeping them, she said 'because they're like free Tupperware.' This was, down to the exact wording, the excuse I had given R maybe two nights before when he discovered my personal stash. But you know who was glad we had all that free Tupperware at the end of the day? R, when he got to bring some of this casserole to work, mounded into a container that had started life transporting delicious horchata from our local taqueria.

The recipe comes from Faith Durand's relatively new book Not Your Mother's Casseroles. You may be familiar with Faith if you're a regular reader of Apartment Therapy's The Kitchn, which she oversees. I really love this book so far. This is the second recipe I've made from it. The first was devoured before any pics could be taken, so I guess it's back in the line-up. I made a few substitutions here. Brown rice for the white, dried beans for the canned. In general I find her casseroles to be creative and many of them include whole grains, vegetables, beans. You know, good for you food. And good for lunch, too.

Spicy Mexican and Bean Rice Bake
Adapted from Faith Durand's Not Your Mother's Casseroles

Olive oil for the pan
1 large onion, diced
1 green bell pepper, cored and diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
Pinch of red pepper flakes
3 cups cooked brown rice, which you'll get from boiling 1 cup of rice in about 2 cups of water, but check the package to be sure of the ratio
1 cup dried kidney, soaked overnight
1 cup dried black beans, soaked overnight
One 15-ounce can diced tomatoes, drained well
Handful fresh, chopped cilantro
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
1 cup sour cream
2 large eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon mild chili powder
2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Get a large pot of water boiling and cook the beans for about 1.5 hours. This can depend on how long they were soaking, so start checking after about 1 hour. When the beans are done, drain and set aside. This is also a good time to get your rice going, if you haven't yet. When the rice is cooked, set that aside as well.

Preheat the oven to 375F and grease the baking dish.

Head some oil in a skillet over medium heat then add the onion and green pepper. Cook until you can smell the vegetables and they soften. Add the garlic and red pepper flakes and continue to cook for 5 minutes more.

Toss the sautéed vegetables into a large bowl along with the rice and tomatoes. Next add the cilantro, the beans and 1.5 cups of the cheese and toss to combine.

In a separate bowl, whisk the sour cream together with the beaten eggs, the chili powder, the cumin, the salt and pepper to taste. This mixture into the beans and then spread it in your prepared baking dish. Sprinkle the remaining cheese over the top and bake for 1 hour, until warmed through and slightly browned. Serve.

Rye Bread Madder with Cottage Cheese, Herbs and Vegetables

I think I've told this story before, but I come from a long line of story-repeaters, so who am I to resist? My dad likes to tell this one, actually, about the time he asked R what he would consider to be Norway's national dish and R answered 'sandwiches'. R wasn't talking about two slices of sad deli meat between white bread soggy with mayo, of course. But that quintessential Scandinavian obsession, the madder, or open-faced sandwich on rye bread. The word madder I'm pretty sure is a Danish one, but you can find the same thing in Norway, where they're called smørbrød. Slices of whole-grain rye bread heaped with toppings like smoked salmon, tiny shrimps, piles of crabmeat, ham, brown cheese, and it goes on.

In Norway you'd be able to find a good rye fresh-baked in a local bakery. Or you might even be able to make your own without special ordering what we in the US might consider to be 'exotic' whole grains (cracked whole rye comes to mind. Just try finding that in the local Whole Foods. Good luck). So what I've been using are breads from a German company called Mestemacher, which are shaped just like the classic Norwegian variety and contain a ridiculous number of whole grains. They have rye breads with sunflower seeds, rye breads with muesli and something called Fitness Bread, which is actually the kind I'm normally able to find.

So the idea behind this particular incarnation of the Scandinavian open-faced sandwich comes from Trina Hahnemann's The Nordic Diet, about which I've written before. You hardly even need a recipe. Just mix some cottage cheese together with chopped chives, some diced tomato and cucumber, and salt and pepper to taste. Then pile it all on top of a couple of slices of hearty rye bread and enjoy!

Beans with Caramelized Onions, Tomatoes and Sage

So this is the order of events which led to today's recipe. I was checking in on my friend M's blog when I read this post. I thought to myself, "that looks good. I want to put that in my face." Then I thought that, although her recipe calls for the more exotic, and probably more delicious, Christmas lima bean (it's a real thing), I had a package of dried regular lima beans waiting to be used up in what I call my pantry, but what is really the two shelves above the sink. I left a comment saying I was going to make the dish, then went to the 'pantry' to dig out the beans and get them soaking.

All of which leads me to the hypothesis that past Andrea has a deep-seated, burning hatred for present Andrea. Because instead of a package of dried lima beans, I found a package of dried fava beans that past Andrea had bought on a whim, probably with malicious intent. See, because the thing is, you might already know that fresh fava beans are a project. They have to be shelled...twice. Each friggin one of those little beans has to be removed from its pod, and then the downy husk has to be taken off. I'll give past Andrea the benefit of the doubt here and say that she probably didn't realize that dried fava beans have been shucked, but not hulled. (Or hulled but not shucked? I actually have no idea what the difference is between those two words.) But the point is that the beans are out of their pod, but the fuzzy layer has been dried right along with the bean and needs to be removed. However, it's no longer a fuzzy layer, but a dried on, brittle, tear-your-fingers-up layer.

So the process is soak, shell, use. Except shelling took all of the season premier of The Bachelorette, and half of the 11:00 news. And that stupid fuzzy layer is tough, man! My fingers are still soar. So anyway, I'm not going to call this recipe Fava Beans with Caramelized Onions, Tomatoes and Sage because I don't really think it's worth using dried favas. If I were you, I'd go the lima route à la the original post, and actually M makes those Christmas limas sound pretty damn good if you want to search them out.

You'll notice that in her original post, M uses white wine to add flavor to the dish. She freely adds wine to a lot of dishes because she keeps two boxes of wine, one white and one red, on her counter especially for cooking. So when she needs it, she just fills up her measuring cup right from the tap, as it were. And you can mark my words that once I have a real kitchen, with counter space that can accommodate it, I'm going to do the exact same thing. For now, however, I had some red wine that needed using and no white. I think you can guess what I did.

Beans with Caramelized Onions, Tomatoes and Sage
Adopted from this recipe on this blog

1 package dried beans, soaked overnight and then cooked according to how you like to do it (M uses a pressure cooker, I just boil water)
Olive oil for the pan
2 medium vidalia onions, thinly sliced
About 2 tablespoons chopped fresh sage, plus extra for garnish
3 cloves garlic, passed through a press
1/2 cup red wine
Salt to taste
4 medium tomatoes, sliced
Parmesan cheese for serving (M also recommends feta, and she rightly points out that you really do need a saltier cheese to offset the earthiness of the dish)

Heat some oil in a large skillet over medium-low heat. Add the onions and caramelize until they're how you want them. As you probably know, you can caramelize the heck out of onions if you really want to go for it by turning the heat way down and cooking them forever. Or you can keep the heat where it is and caramelize for about 20 minutes, which is what I did. Remove the onions from the skillet and set them aside.

In the same pan, heat a bit more oil, then add the garlic and cook until fragrant but not browned, about 30 seconds. Add the shopped sage and fry until that is also fragrant, then add the wine and season with salt. When the liquid starts to bubble, add the tomatoes and cook until they start to fall apart and the liquid has reduced a bit.

Add the onions and gently stir in the beans. You'll notice from the photos that my beans fell apart quite a bit, but that was a function of over-cooking. Heat the mixture through, then serve with Parmesan cheese grated over the top and a few leaves of fresh sage.

Rhubarb-Filled Cookies

If I were rich and famous and could get away with such things, I'd name my first-born daughter Rhubarb and then call her Ruby. Okay, there is no way I'd ever do that, even if I were rich and famous. I might do it to a dog, though. That might happen. The point is that I love Rhubarb. I love it enough to capitalize it at inappropriate times.

I love it so much that if you search this blog you'll find Rhubarb gelées, Rhubarb compote, chicken roasted with Rhubarb, a Rhubarb cake, and Rhubarb soup and porridge. I am so obsessed that just reading the recipe index might give you a case of semantic satiation. Rhubarb, Rhubarb, Rhubarb.

So I guess it should be obvious that I'm always on the lookout for new ways to use my favorite vegetable. Enter the Rhubarb-Filled Cookie. They're tender, cake-like cookies, rich with butter and filled with a compote of sweetened and thickened rhubarb. If you want your rhubarb cookies to be filled with a ruby-colored filling, you have to find stalks of the same color. Unfortunately, our closest grocery store only ever carries green rhubarb that barely blush at the ends. So my filling isn't quite the sunset-red that I'd prefer. But the taste is the same.

You might end up with some leftover rhubarb filling. I definitely did. But you can use it pretty much like rhubarb jam. May I suggest swirling it into your morning oatmeal? Or just eating it with a spoon?

Rhubarb-Filled Cookies
Adapted from Taste of Home Cookies

For the cookies:

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed light brown sugar
4 large eggs
4 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt

For the filling:

550g fresh rhubarb, chopped
1 1/2 cup granulated sugar
Water
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cream the butter and both of the sugars together in a large bowl until well combined. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, mixing well between each addition. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt. Add this dry mixture to the butter mixture in thirds. Be sure the batter is well-mixed, but don't overwork the dough.

For the filling, into a pot large enough to hold everything, pour enough water to just cover the bottom of the pot (you really don't want too much water) then add the rhubarb along with the sugar. Cook over medium to medium-low heat until the rhubarb starts to reduce and thicken, about 10 minutes. Stir frequently to prevent burning. In a small separate bowl, combine the cornstarch with 4 tablespoons of water and whisk until the mixture is smooth and lose. Stir this mixture into the rhubarb and bring to a boil. Cook for about 2 more minutes until the cornstarch has a chance to thicken up the rhubarb mixture to a thick jam-like consistency. Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla.

Preheat the oven to 375F

Measure out the dough using a tablespoon and roll each piece of dough into a smooth ball. Place them 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet (you'll need more than one, I baked 4 sheets worth, but my sheets are small). Using the handle of a wooden spoon, make a well in the middle of each cookie. Spoon some of the rhubarb filling into each well. Break off small pieces of dough and plop those into the middle of the filling. Bake for 10-11 minutes, until the cookies are lightly browned but still relatively soft. Cool on wire racks.

Semolina with Cherries

It's funny how some ingredients can lead you on little mini adventures as you figure out who to use them us. I first bought semolina flour in order to add a few spoonfuls to this Norwegian sour cream porridge. (Still one of my favorite Old World finds. It's seriously time to bring porridge back.) And in anticipation of my move to Paris (for one year!! for dissertation research!! with a fellowship!!) I've been trying to clear out the pantry of things like extra semolina that R is not likely to use.

So the Scandinavians use it in porridge (as it was cooking up, it did remind me of Cream of Wheat, that childhood favorite), as do the British and even the French. The Italians tend to use semolina for gnocchi because of the light texture it imparts, and also for desserts such as this.

Basically, a glug of sweet white wine (or, if you're me you realize too late on a Sunday afternoon that you don't have the extra stash you thought you did, and that, by virtue of it being Sunday, sweet white wine is not available, you use a glug of ginger ale instead) is simmered with the semolina along with a few eggs, a little sugar and some chopped almonds. A stiffly-beaten egg white lightens it a bit before pitted cherries are folded in and it's baked in a bain marie.

Okay, let's talk bain marie. It's merely a French term, which I'm shoe-horning into an Italian recipe, that describes the technique of putting a smaller pan of food into a larger pan and filling the larger pan with boiling water so that it comes about half-way up the sides of the smaller pan nestled inside (see the picture above). It's a gentle way to cook foods, and you might also see the technique used for cheesecakes, puddings or custards. If you had nesting bakers, those work well since you know the smaller size will fit perfectly into the larger one.

This is also the perfect moment for this recipe since we're in the middle of the fleeting cherry season, at least here in NYC. If you don't have a cherry-pitter, you might consider getting one, since they make much easier work of dealing with the fruit. I put it off for about two cherry seasons, eschewing all recipes that called for pitted cherries until I finally broke down. It was totally worth it. And about the superfine sugar. I always say this, but it's worth using because it dissolves so much faster and, well, better. If you don't have superfine (I literally never do), just wizz regular white sugar in a food processor for a few seconds until its texture lightens and it becomes superfine.

Semolina with Cherries, or Semolino alle Ciliege
Adopted from The Silver Spoon

Butter for greasing your dish
1 cup sweet white wine, or if you don't have it or want to avoid it, 1 cup ginger ale
2/3 cup semolina
2 large eggs
generous 1/2 cup superfine sugar (see note above)
3 cups cherries, pitted (you don't need to chop them after they're pitted)
1/2 cup blanched almonds, chopped
1 egg white

Oven preheated to 400F. Grease a baking dish with the butter, and make sure you have a larger baking dish into which the greased baking dish can fit. Get a pot of water on the stove so you can bring it to a boil as you work, you'll use it for baking in the bain marie (see note above).

In a medium pot bring the wine and 2 1/4 cups water to a boil then sprinkle the semolina over the top. Turn the heat down to low and start stirring the semolina. You'll have to continue stirring the entire time or it will burn, since you'll be cooking it until it's nice and thick, about 15 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool just a bit, then add the eggs one at a time, stirring well between each one. Next add the sugar and almonds and fold in the cherries.

In a clean bowl, beat the egg white until stiff, and fold that into the semolina mixture. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan, and place that pan into the larger one. Your extra pot of water should be boiling by now, so carefully pour some boiling water into the larger pan until it comes about halfway up the sides of the smaller pan. Carefully transfer the pans to the oven and bake for 45 minutes. If yours starts to get too brown before it's finished, you can tent it with tinfoil, which just means lay a piece of tinfoil over the top to prevent further browning.

Remove (carefully! That water will still be boiling!) from the oven, and take the smaller pan out of the larger one. Let the semolina cool to room temperature before serving, if you can wait!

My Favorite Asparagus Vinaigrette

My Very Favorite Asparagus Vinaigrette is the name given to this recipe by Sarah Leah Chase in her book Cold-Weather Cooking, but it's the title I would have used as well. And it's definitely the title R would have chosen, because he helped me polish off the entirety of two pounds of asparagus for lunch. R is notoriously unenthusiastic (I think he calls it even-keeled), so if he mentions more than once that he likes something, he really, really likes it.

This is also the first time I've ever been talked into peeling asparagus. So now I can say, after having done it, that it's not worth it. Sorry French people and Proust lovers, it's not. But if you're just sitting around waiting for your delicious, delicious vinaigrette to mellow at room temperature, and your hands start itching, I mean, go ahead and do it. But you don't need to make it a priority.

Although the recipe comes from a book called Cold-Weather Cooking (a book which, by the way, has never let me down), it's decidedly of this early-summer moment when asparagus is in season and if you're lucky you can even get some good tomatoes. It's like the reward for months of root vegetables and stews.

My Very Favorite Asparagus Vinaigrette
Adopted from Sarah Leah Chase's Cold-Weather Cooking

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 1/2 tablespoons fresh squeezed lemon juice (about 1/2 a large lemon)
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 small clove garlic, passed through a press
Scant 1/2 cup olive oil
1 plum tomato (make sure it's a good one!) seeded and diced
Salt and pepper to taste
1 pound asparagus, trimmed and peeled only if you're feeling fussy
1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

For the vinaigrette, whisk together the first 4 ingredients in a small bowl. Whisk in the olive oil in a slow stream until combined, then stir in the tomato. Season to taste with salt and pepper and let mellow at room temperature for at least 30 minutes before adding to the asparagus.

In the meantime, cook the asparagus using your preferred method: steaming or boiling. I boiled mine for about 3 minutes. Be careful not to overcook. Drain the asparagus, but don't shock it in cold water, because you want to dress it while it's still warm. Fan the asparagus out on a large, shallow serving dish. Pour the vinaigrette over the top and sprinkle with the Parmesan cheese. Allow the dish to sit for another 30 minutes so the asparagus can absorb the vinaigrette. Serve.

Lemon Pea and Rice Soup

The Kitchn, where I found this recipe, doesn't call this dish Risi e Bisi, the Venetian phrase for rice and peas. But, I mean, that's what it is, with variation. And the fact that they never mention the Italian roots of the dish (although it does get thrown around in the comments) is, as luck would have it, exactly what John Thorne is talking about in the preface to his book Simple Cooking where he discusses rice and peas. Thorne talks about learning to cook from cookbooks (as I have) and realizing that there is little conversing that goes on between them. And that it took introducing all of the Italian cookbooks in his collection to one another to make "the magically seamless world of those isolated Italian cuisines [dissolve] into five, six, seven Italian cooks all fruitfully squabbling with each other."

Because with a little looking, Thorne discovered that Risi e Bisi appear all over Italian cooking, with pasta sometimes replacing the rice in certain regions, and with meat being added in others. With more sleuthing, Thorne discovered that there are as many philosophies about how to make this dish as there are writers writing about it. Jane Grigson has her opinions, Waverly Root has his. Marcella Hazan asserts that Risi et Bisi is not risotto, as Grigson and Elizabeth David would have it, but soup as Ada Boni says.

I love this story because food people can be so strident in their opinions. And yet, they're always just opinions, and food is just food. And really, who the heck cares as long as it tastes good. So maybe the usual way is not to add a bunch of lemon juice and zest to your light spring soup of rice and peas, and maybe you're supposed to stick with parsley to flavor it. But the Kitchn adds plenty of lemon and even mint. I myself kept the lemon but swapped out the mint for chives. Like Thorne, who provides a recipe for both the soup and the risotto variety, I'm not taking sides. Except to say that I loved this risi, bisi e limone.

Lemon Pea and Rice Soup
Adapted from this recipe from The Kitchn

1 medium onion, diced
4 cups vegetable stock
2 cups water
2 lemons, zested and juiced
3 tablespoons chives plus extra for serving
2 cups cooked brown rice (from 3/4 cups dry)
2 cups peas (fresh or frozen, both are fine)
Salt
Oil for the pan

Heat the oil in the pot that you're going to use to make the soup and cook the onions along with a pinch of salt until they're soft and translucent but not quite browned.

Add the stock and water to the pot and bring the liquid to a gentle boil. Add the lemon juice (I used all of it, but you might want to add only part, taste, and add the rest) along with the zest, 3 tablespoons of chives and 1 teaspoon of salt or to taste. Give it a quick stir, then add the cooked rice and the peas. Let the liquid come back to a simmer before serving. Remember, you can always add more lemon juice, chives, or salt if you think the soups needs it.

Ramp Tart on Rye Crust

This is one of those posts I thought I'd better get to you quick, because ramp season is nothing if not fleeting. And ramps can be nothing if not hard to find. And there's a reason for that. Part of the reason is that they're usually foraged, not cultivated. At least, that's the way my CSA, Holton Farms, does it. And if you're in the NYC area, you should definitely look them up, because they are one great CSA.

So I realize that ramps aren't going to be available everywhere, nor are they available for very long. So you can substitute leeks for the ramps here and you'll still come up with a great tart. But if you happen to be at a farmers market and you happen on ramps, grab them, confident that this tart recipe is waiting for you. And if, upon coming home with your treasure, you discover that a tart isn't really what you're craving, you can also make a Ramp and Potato Soup, Ramps with Lemony Couscous, or even just sauté them with some bacon.

Now about the recipe. I used a crust from one of my new favorite cookbooks, The Nordic Diet by Trina Hahnemann. But speaking of ingredients that can be hard to find! Hahnemann calls for 1/2 cup of quark or fromage frais for the dough. Just hold on now, if you're about to close down the window on account of all the shopping around you think you might need to do. Both quark and fromage frais are fresh cheeses, in other words, unaged. I think that since I was lucky with my ramps, it was only right that I would be unable to find either quark or fromage frais, so I used fromage blanc, which is another french-style fresh cheese, just like fromage frais. 'Oh thanks a lot, Andrea' you might be thinking 'for suggesting fromage blanc as a substitute for quark (cue eye roll). That's totally much easier'. But that's actually not what I'm suggesting because I am almost 100% sure that you could just use sour cream. Yes, the taste is different, and sour cream is slightly higher fat (so get reduced or something then), but it should act as a binder just as well. So sour cream, quark, or fromages frais or blanc should all work. It's a bit of a dry dough, so you may need to add some water while kneading or do a little patching-up job once you've got it into your tart pan. But no one will notice.

So that's the crust. The filling recipe comes from one of the World Community Cookbooks called Simply in Season. Never heard of the World Community series? They're cookbooks put out by the Mennonite Central Committee, all of which focus on fresh, whole food and delicious, nourishing cooking. They're completely unassuming, no pictures, just the recipes. Almost like quality-controlled community cookbooks. Remember, if you can't find ramps, use leeks, but use only the white part of the leek, whereas you'll use the entire ramp.

Ramp Tart on Rye Crust
Recipes adopted from Trina Hahnemann's The Nordic Diet and Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert's Simply in Season

For the crust:

1/2 cup wheat flour
1 3/4 cups rye flour
1 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons butter, cut into chunks and chilled
1/2 cup quark, fromage frais, fromage blanc or sour cream

Sift the flours and salt together into a bowl. Add the butter and rub it into the flour with your fingers until it has the texture of oatmeal. Using a wooden spoon, stir the cheese into the flour mixture. As it comes together to form a dough, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and kneed it just enough so that it holds a ball shape. If it's too crumbly, add a little water. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.

For the filling:

3 eggs
1 cup evaporated milk
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 1/2 cups ramps, both the whites and the greens chopped (or use leeks)
1 cup shredded gruyère cheese

Whisk the eggs, milk, salt and pepper together in a bowl and set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Spray a 9 or 10" tart pan with a removable bottom with cooking spray and set aside. Remove the dough from the refrigerator and roll out to a size large enough to be draped over your tart pan. Line the pan with the dough, trimming off extra dough from the sides, which you can then use to patch any tears.

Line the dough with parchment paper and pour dried beans on the paper. This will keep the dough from puffing while you parbake, or partially bake it. You might want to put the tart on a cookie sheet, because I find that whenever I have to pour a custard over a tart as in this one, there tends to be some leakage. Slide the tart crust into the oven and bake for 15 minutes.

Remove the tart from the oven and remove the parchment paper and beans. Put the ramps on the bottom of the tart and sprinkle the cheese over the top. Pour the egg mixture into the shell and return to the oven for another 40 minutes, until the filling is slightly browned and set. Remove and let cool slightly before serving.

Rhubarb with Vanilla and Crème de Cassis

Is it a cop-out to say that my favorite vegetable is rhubarb? Maybe. But for now at least it's the truth. Probably because there are few other vegetables that taste as good in a pie, in a free-form tart, eaten by themselves with a little sugar, or folded into whipped cream. Oh, and on yogurt. And speaking of yogurt, now that winter is (frickin') finally over, I can get back to baking or simmering my own fruit down for topping Greek yogurt. Remember last year when we did that with plums and cardamom? That stuff was good. I could eat vats of it.

And as much as I love plums, I think I might like rhubarb even better. This isn't exactly the same sort of thing as the plum compote because the rhubarb doesn't cook down to be as thick as the plums did, since we're roasting rather than reducing. But just like the plums, I could eat it by itself. In vats.

There are only four ingredients, but they're good ones. Fresh rhubarb, some sugar, a real vanilla bean and a good helping of crème de cassis, a liqueur made from blackcurrents and so quintessentially French (you might remember it from this tart). If you'd rather serve this as a fancy British dessert, rather than as breakfast, you might fold it into some sweetened whipped cream for a rhubarb fool, or use it as a filling for a tart. Or just eat it with a spoon.

Rhubarb with Vanilla and Crème de Cassis
Adapted from Christopher Hirsheimer and Peggy Knickerbocker's The San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market Cookbook

2 pounds rhubarb, sliced into 1" pieces
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup crème de cassis
1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise

Oven preheated to 350F. Stir all of the ingredients together in a large baking dish and bake for about 30 minutes. The rhubarb should be tender and should release some of its juices.

Remove from the oven and take out the vanilla bean. Scrape the seeds into the rhubarb mixture with the tip of a knife. You can serve it warm or cold, over yogurt or whipped cream.