Steerike Three!

Well - the soup and beet stacks plated up beautifully - wouldn't you agree?

I thought the soup was great - really fresh, light, a nice way to start a meal without being too filling. A beautiful color, something to please the eye as well as the palate.

My husband was less enthusiastic. He is just not a chilled soup fan as it happens. (He did like the bacon on top.) And when it came to the beet stacks - another swing and a miss. My husband likes roasted beets. He likes herbed goat cheese. Somehow though, he didn't like the end effect of having the two together, snuggled in a blanket of fresh sorrel. Go figure.

I thought the blend of the tangy creamy cheese, the sweetness of the beet, and the fresh slightly lemony taste of the sorrel leaf all worked together pretty brilliantly. It was a great finger food. The toothpick holds it together neatly for that first grab off the plate, then the leaf on the outside means you can safely hold it snugly in your fingers to daintily take two bites without getting your hands messy. This would be a great appetizer for a party. Easy to put together, pretty quickly assembled once you get the beets roasted and cut. Great potential color combinations. I could see how a platter of these stacks made with different colored beets could yield a pretty snappy looking tray.

But the soup...I had some left over. I wanted to try once more (with feeling!)...

So today for lunch I heated up some of the remaining sorrel/leek/pea soup. I threw more bacon on top and this time a little grated Gruyere for additional garnish on top. My husband liked it "better" warmed, but is still not a sorrel fan.

One thing I learned. When making a soup that will be served chilled, it is important to recheck the seasoning before serving. Once the soup chilled, it lost some of the layers of flavor I noted when it was hot out of the blender. So a chilled soup will perhaps require more seasoning than a hot one. The taste is simply more pronounced when heated it seemed.I regret to say, "rumex scutatus", "French Sorrel", will not take a place in the pantheon of family favorites. I feel quite certain that IF my husband was going to like it, he would have liked it one of the three ways I've tried so far. I will keep checking for recipes - I am nothing if not stubborn - but once cut, sorrel doesn't stay workable very long, even in the refrigerator. I feel fairly certain if I don't find some other "can't miss" recipe this afternoon, the last bit of the remaining sorrel will be heading out back to the compost bin.

If I had grown this sorrel from seed I'd have a hard time letting this go. Even if I'd only researched recipes and then bought some at the store, I'd probably feel somewhat personally offended that it was poorly received. Since it just randomly appeared in our CSA basket, and I know I did my dead level best to find the "most likely to be liked" presentation? I can be much more detached, philosophical even, about the entire failur, er, process. One last note. With dinner, I had a glass of a delightful Portugese white, the Santola Vinho Verde. Inexpensive, less than $8 a bottle locally, slightly effervescent and nicely balanced for warm weather eating especially. Try a bottle out - with or without sorrel - you won't regret it. And if you like the white, do try out the rosé.

Warming Up to Cold Soup

We made a trip to Jeffrey's this past weekend, to celebrate Mother's Day and my son's birthday which was Saturday.

We were especially impressed with the various soups we were served. One, an amuse bouche of cold avocado soup with smoked salmon and cucumber, was the last in a series of cold soup experiences that have slowly but surely moved me into the chilled soup fan base.

So today, when I began my exploration of what to do with the sorrel that arrived in our weekly CSA subscription basket, I was more interested than usual in a cold soup recipe I found at epicurious.com, "Sorrel, Pea, and Leek Soup".

This recipe originally ran in the April 1996 "Gourmet" magazine. Surely if any deaths resulted we'd have heard about it by now. I felt quite secure in progressing even though sorrel and I are just barely getting acquainted.

The recipe ingredient list begins by calling for the white and pale green parts of 3 leeks (about 3/4 pound). As it turns out, in this week's basket we received 4 leeks. The rest of the ingredient list was already sitting someplace in my pantry or refrigerator, so I figured I was meant to make this soup. Destiny was calling and she was holding a soup spoon in her hand.My one comment so far on this recipe is that the 45 minutes or less prep time it predicts fails to take into account my typical snail's pace when preparing a new recipe with a novel ingredient. I have been preparing dinners for a family for three decades now. I am no stranger to a knife, but the process of taking the stems and center vein out of "enough" sorrel to yield three loosely packed cups of chiffonade leaves was not a rapid process. Maybe next time I'll clock in closer to the 45 minute mark. This time it took me closer to an hour to gather my ingredients, read and re-read the recipe to make sure I had a good grasp of the steps, and then finally to blend the cooked and raw ingredients into what looked to me to be a "very smooth" consistency.Side note: I may have totalled my blender this go-round. I carefully placed the work pitcher in the dishwasher and am waiting to reassemble it and see if it still does anything other than make noise. We may be in the market for a new appliance soon. Anybody know of a good use for a defunct blender?

I did taste a bit of the soup warm. In the reviews of the recipe I noted a few who served it warm because they lived in cold weather spots and weren't in the market for a chilled soup. So I felt certain if I liked it warm, I'd be more confident serving this to my husband chilled and swirled with Crema and topped with crisped bacon.

The bacon is my own innovation. The recipe calls for chopped hard boiled egg and more sorrel on top. I figure the sorrel I tasted was pretty lively, and chopped egg is not going to win a friend the way chopped crispy bits of pork will. Hence the substitution. Plus I was able to find a responsible all natural nitrate and nitrite free bacon source at the market which is local, from Hamilton, Texas. To boot, Pederson's Natural Farms is a certified humane facility. Besides holding a soup spoon, my version of Destiny loves her some bacon. Pederson Farms makes it possible for me to have my bacon and enjoy it too!We will see how the completed, chilled, bacon topped dish is received as a second course for dinner this evening. I also have some Sorrel-wrapped goat cheese and beet stacks planned as appetizers. After that we will have a pretty pedestrian fare of grilled chicken and perhaps a salad or some rice. The whiz-bang for this meal all comes front loaded.I will report back on the premiere of this gorgeously green soup. And our beet stacks. The recipe will make 60 appetizers which is about 56 more than I'll need, so I will be spending some time reworking the instructions. However, since this is mostly a matter of piling food up once you get past roasting the beets, I am optimistic I have not gotten too ambitious for a nice dinner featuring our new weekly star, Sorrel.

Fashionable

When it comes to fashion, I like separates. Mixing different shirts and sweaters [tops] with pants and skirts [bottoms] makes it easier for me to stretch my dollars and my wardrobe and it helps keep me from getting too tired of any one look.

Our basket this week reflects the vegetable version of that in terms of encompassing an array of vegetables, some of which are known for their "tops", or greens, and some of which are exciting because of their "bottoms", or roots. Today's harvest in Basket Number Seven, yielded a lovely large head of romaine, cilantro, (tops if you will) and two yellow granex onions, leeks, carrots, and a head of garlic (bottoms) , all of which I know just what to do with.

The stretch in this week's basket will be a large bunch of French Sorrel, which I have zero experience with (so far). Our newsletter included a recipe for Sorrel Vichyssoise, but my partner in basketry here is not a huge Vichyssoise fan. So it's off to the internet for me to find out more about Sorrel, to review several recipes, and to find one that seems to hold promise for our first ever venture into Sorrel Appreciation. This Searching for Sorrel will take me hopefully more in the ready to wear category of recipes, and not too far into haute cuisine. I know these vegetables have been appearing on farm tables for centuries. That is the kind of approach I want to find. Something simple, respectful of the freshness and nutritional bounty the sorrel can bring, as opposed to one of those page long recipes calling for a specialty pan, a twenty dollar bottle of vinegar and a pinch of some spice I'll need an ethnic grocer to supply.

We also got some golden beets which are prized not only for their own sweetness, but also for their greens. Our newsletter pointed out that beets and Swiss chard are essentially the same plant - one bred for leaves and the other for roots. Now that was a news flash for me, and it helps me to better understand how to use the beet tops now that I know they are just chard with an over developed root on one end. And that is something I realize is my "next step". I've been pretty good about using all my vegetables but there are a lot of greens I put into my compost pile that other people have cooked and eaten. While I am giving myself a free ride for a bit on that count - I am making good progress - I know I still have a way to go in my education in local eating. The Asparagus Army watches and waits....

Learning to do something new well includes running the risk of the occasional "C-" for a few dishes that don't quite please all palates- but at least we get to eat the homework. To recap my assignment: Find a recipe or preparation technique for Sorrel that will have us wondering how we lived without it for so long. I'll keep you posted.