Asparagus & Eggs

Local asparagus has finally arrived in Czech Republic. After eyeing up so many lovely blog posts featuring the brilliant green vegetable all crispy and tangy, I needn't lust any longer.

Later this week today we will have a taste test of green and white asparagus varieties. (You can check that out here.) But for now, let me tempt any of those still patiently waiting for their local season to arrive with my breakfast - asparagus and eggs with parmesan. The classic. I can't resist this flavour punch - nor the cute as all heck little quail eggs that I picked up recently.

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Nigella's Crispy Duck

Just in case any readers are the type who bore easily, let me share a fantastic way to spice up that ol' weekend roast chicken - a crispy Chinese flavoured duck, à la Nigella Lawson.


Now, it does call for Chinese pancakes, which I would love to try to make during a week with slightly less craze, however we subbed in the old tortilla standby.

(If you'd like to try your hand at them, though, I liked this run through of the Chinese pancake process on the BBC Good Food page.)

We also spiced up the duck itself a bit before roasting it with some soy sauce and Chinese 5-spice powder. With the freshest, localist cuke and spring onions atop, along with a good dollop of hoisin sauce - duckilicious.

Dobrou Chut'/ Enjoy.
-- Jo

Mushroom Spinach Tortellini

Mushroom picking is often touted as the Czech national pastime (this is of course after hockey, which we don't exactly want to talk about after their devestating loss against Sweden this afternoon.)

While it is true that most Czechs I know have, at one time or another, picked mushrooms, the activity is somewhat falling out of favour. Few young adults have the drive to rise at 6 AM on the weekend to get out there and compete with the scads of retirees who seem to keep breathing only for the purpose of those mushrooms. Does that sound cruel? It wouldn't if you were a member of the 'young adult' group heading to the farmers market at 9 AM on the tram surrounded by little old ladies clutching full baskets of fungi eyeing up everyone who looks as if they've just crawled out of bed with a barely contained smirk.

Yes, they are a proud group these early mushroom gatherers. And for that reason I feel just fine shelling out my hard-earned korun for a few hundred grams of gorgeous fungi from a little old man in a sweater vest.

Please note that while I do have the tendency to over-romanticize things (especially old men at the market) I am not in this case, as the guy who was selling the best mushrooms was really wearing a sweater vest atop an old plaid button down. Is it patronizing to say I wanted to fold him up and tuck him in my pocket?

At any rate, his charm certainly worked on me, as I also succumbed to some type of heritage garlic that had peelings of a dark fuchsia hue. I've always passed up heritage garlic before, wondering how garlic could actually be any better.

I was foolish.

I know this now.

Heritage garlic rocks my world. It's a bit of a pain to peel, to be honest. And when chopping, it seems crunchier and waterier, almost like a water chestnut. But my hubs described the flavours perfectly when he said it was like a young, pure garlic. Not as strong as traditional garlic, but more garlic flavour. If that makes any sense to you. It did to me while we were gobbling up a quick post-market dish I threw together with store-bought tortellini that needed eating.

We had also grabbed a few bunches of spinach. So looking at the mushrooms, spinach, and garlic, it seemed an easy pair with the fresh pasta. Now, it must be said that we used oyster mushrooms, which I know are usually paired with more Asian-esque flavours. However, since everything was so absolutely fresh it worked just lovely as an Italian-inspired dish.

Any mushrooms will do here, cremini, portebello, porcini, or a mix of those. We had some porcini oil waiting to be opened that added to the depth of flavour. I really do recommend a fantastic mushroom (truffle, porcini, or other) infused oil for drizzling over before serving. It may be a bit pricey, but a small bottle will last you quite awhile and imparts a good hit of flavour.

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Lavender Custard Tart

It all started during the Easter market a few weeks past. A stand with lavender-based products was also selling bunches of dried lavender.

I was feeling the spring in the air and had a strange desire to buy a bunch of flowers. Now, some may question why this desire is strange, so I must reveal that I consider myself to be an anti-cut-flower kind of girl. They die. They belong outside anyways, what are they doing in a vase on the table with a greatly reduced life-span than they would outside? I don't know, it's a practical thing I suppose.


On the other hand, flowering plants and herbs offer one's dwelling both a bit of living greenery AND their more practical nature. Most herbs surprisingly do just fine tended by my thumb, which, sadly, only has a hint of a green hue to it. More like a green desire really than any deeply saturated green-coloured knack.



Lavender is the one plant for which I deeply yearn for a garden. Fresh veg I can get a good variety of at the market, herbs are on the windowsill. Lavender I hear, however, has a deep-root growing requirement that would make me have to convert a big barrel of a garbage pail to grow one plant. And who wants lavender growing from a garbage pail?

A dried cluster of fragile lavender buds peeking over their brown paper wrapping, however, offers me both the fulfilled feeling of being a girl strolling around the central market holding a bunch of flowers AND that practical value. You see, I've been yearning to cook with lavender. I had a nice little chat in Czech with the man tending the stall who (I think) assured me that it was food safe, without nasty sprays and so on.



I thought a lot about what the first lavender infused dish will be and decided on following a recipe I found for a Lavender-Scented Custard Tart.

It was created by Marcus Wareing, the British chef who made this for the Queen's 80th Birthday. Yep, the Queen. He made dessert for the the Queen's birthday. One doesn't mess around with a recipe like that. I kept it exactly as is. And you know what? I can see it being absolutely adored by anyone, royalty or non-royalty.

The lavender steeps in the cream overnight (or in my case, two nights.) His recipe calls for fresh lavender, but I just doubled up on the dried lavender and it imparted a subtle but noticeable flavour. The custard was sooo smooth and the pastry crust was crispy, crumbly, and lemony. It's only a pity that I made this with significant doubt of my custard tart abilities and thus didn't plan on sharing with anyone. Or maybe that wasn't such a pity after all. Yum!

For the recipe, please see the write-up in The Times

(Edited Note: I tried to make it again, and to my dismay, one now needs to be a subscriber of the The Times to access the recipe. A little googling resulted in a repost of it on Nigella's site)

Dobrou Chut'/ Enjoy.
-- Jo

Fennel Orange Salad and Smoked Paprika Pork {Spanish Řízek}

Living in the Czech Republic continuously influences my food choices - even when I'm not looking to eat typical Czech cuisine. In the past, when a big beautiful bulb of fennel was spotted at the market, I would think about an equally big, beautiful fennel and orange salad. Maybe with walnuts. Or with grapefruit segments. But definitely I thought in terms of salads.

Now, I see fennel and it screams: PORK! Fennel and pork, fennel and pork, oh boy, oh boy.

I gasped. I composed myself. 'How about a compromise?' said one little part of the mind to the other little part of the mind.

It didn't turn into a terribly innovative dinner, rather classic really, but it does fit the eating styles of one healthy-leaning lady and one full-on Czech bloke.

The reigning popularity of Czech cuisine in the Czech Republic continues to amaze me. Young and old alike seek the classics developed decades upon decades ago. One of these is řizek (wiener schnitzel.) Think chicken fried steak, or a giant chicken nugget if you like, but instead of chicken stick in the middle a piece a beaten, flattened pork. You can eat it alone with mashed potatoes, or between two slices of dark semi-rye bread as a sandie (it's the most popular snack to bring in the car for long-distance travel. Maybe I'll tell you about that Czech bus trip to Italy some time. Here's a hint: nearly 100 řízek sandwiches in a bus for 15 hours. Awesome.)
 
I mention řízek to explain why I tell the hubs this dish is a Spanish řízek. Basically, it's your average breaded and fried piece of pork found in Central Europe, except with a good dose of smoked paprika (pimentón) and baked, not fried. The pork fennel relationship is satisfied by the addition of the salad, which really balances out the meal on it's own. This duo is satisfies multiple locales on the tongue extremely well.

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Grilled Eggplant & Minty Feta Roll-Ups

 

Who doesn't work too much, raise their hand.

If your hand is up, I'm looking at you with googly-jealous eyes. If not, let's not start that ol' who works more and harder routine. No one ever wins.

I'm a teacher. Not a school teacher, but an English-as-a-second-language teacher. As such, I still follow those school-year rhythms. This time of year I'm frazzled and longing for summer. Aren't we all?

Sometimes I pretend I have the luxury of scads of time on my hands. I wander around the farmer's market two times. First, to see which veg are looking sweet that morning, to get a feel for the prices, and to see who looks like a friendly farmer. Second, to seal the deal on some fennel, assorted lettuces, a new potted herb (and maybe some strawberries from god-knows-where if I'm feeling like a naughty locavore.) I've done this many a recent Saturday, all the while pretending my weekend clock isn't loudly ticking away.

Since eggplant isn't really a Czech veg, the guy holding down the stall revealed they were from Italy. Well, buying from Italy when in Czech Republic is like buying from Florida when in South Carolina. In other non-geographical words, it's not so far. 

Fits in perfectly (and in my usual time-crunch style) with the Fourth Forever Nigella blogging challenge: Street Party. This month it's being hosted by Mardi at eat.live.travel.write. I'm looking forward to scouting out some new finger food recipes when the posts are all up. For this one, I chose a recipe from Nigella's website, so not sure which book it's from: Griddled Aubergines with Feta, Mint, and Chili. I had to tweak it a bit to accommodate my skinny eggplants/aubergines, which wouldn't roll up very nicely.

The biggest change made was adding strips of tortillas to the line-up (also added in kalamata olives.) The tortillas helped stabilize the form quite well, and hubs (who is partial to carbs as a general rule) said he wouldn't have liked it as much without the tortilla - too much flavour. I then reminded him they are meant to be an appetizer, not a dinner as we made them into. As an appetizer they would be great as originally written. As a light meal, the tortilla rounds them out a bit.

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Best Ever Egg Salad {with Tarragon!}

The morning after (Easter, that is.) Ahhh, egg salad. Here we come. 

I felt just compelled to share my classic egg salad recipe. I stumbled upon it a few years ago and it still pops up in my repertoire at least every other month.

Before discovering this recipe, tarragon was only known to me by name. What was it for? Did people still use it? Was it a British thing? I even romanticized it a bit. I must confess that one line from a homework assignment during my high school poetry class sticks in my memory. Something to the embarrassing effect of tarragon-haired starling on roller skates... Please don't tell anybody this.

Around the same time I found this recipe, my little sister had started her very first garden outside her very first house. I went to visit. She had assorted lettuces, tomatoes, and, yep, tarragon. Tarragon? Really? Isn't that a British thing?

So this is for my sister, who lives seven time zones away from me and I rarely get to see. I haven't asked what's going in her garden this year.

And by the way, I've since learned that tarragon is not so much a British thing as it is a French thing. I envy my sister's access to the fresh stuff, as the dried proves to be little in comparison. I've found that Marks and Spencer does have a fairly good quality dried one though.


If you've got the day off, enjoy your Easter Monday. The hubs and I will be running around with Saffi this afternoon. Just a quick puppy update - she's grown an incredible amount in the last month. She is just over 3 months and is already looking like a full-on dog!

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