#8: Endive with Roquefort

Bleu-cheese lovers, rejoice ... this one's for you! Slather crisp leaves of bitter endive with an indulgent blend of creme fraiche and your favorite bleu cheese (Roquefort here). Top with warm pine nuts and walnuts freshly toasted in butter and a little salt. Arrange on a platter lined with pretty red leaves of radicchio. Enjoy.

Seriously. This was the easiest recipe yet, and if you are better organized than I, you could probably get this one from the refrigerator to the table in under 10 minutes.

Cautionary Note #1: Maybe this looks like a salad, but it's really just an excuse to eat a lot of bleu cheese with toasty nuts. If you're looking for something with a more amped-up nutritional profile, then plan on something else with dinner. Steamed broccoli, perhaps. Or a baked sweet potato. This recipe? This one is just for fun.

Cautionary Note #2: I made half the recipe (for two people), and if I had stacked the leaves in bundles of six as Ottolenghi describes, there would have been only two bundles to arrange on the plate. I stacked mine in bundles of two or three leaves each, and they seemed completely, utterly, perfectly satisfying. Totally undiminished.

Cautionary Note #3: It is entirely possible that you might not use all of the bleu cheese/creme fraiche mixture in the preparation of this recipe. I trust you all will find some way to avoid wasting even a spoonful of anything this luxurious.

Next week, something a little more complicated: gado-gado (p. 195).

#7: Swiss Chard, Chickpea, and Tamarind Stew

This one started off with so much promise:

Looks good, doesn't it? And really, how could you go wrong with chard and chickpeas, a little tomato, a little onion, some coriander? (The photo is missing the chickpeas, caraway, cilantro, and yogurt called for in the recipe, but they all showed up later and reasonably close to on time.) Ottolenghi recommended it as just the thing to brighten up a gloomy day, and lord knows, we've had some gloomy days around here lately. Seemed worth the try.

And even at the start of the braise, things still looked pretty... and pretty promising:

But what we ended up with looked nearly inedible (thus the tiny tiny monochrome picture):

So, yeah. Kind of meh. Healthy, though, and by the time I'd doctored it up, it was certainly worth eating. Maybe even a little interesting. But compared to the jazzy ensembles of exciting flavors that Ottolenghi has provided in past weeks, this one felt more like the kind of party where all the attendees are holding court in their separate corners... they're all making a lot of noise, but no one's having very much fun. After last week's extravagance, this was kind of a letdown.

Maybe it was the fault of the tamarind paste? Tamarind -- a tropical fruit grown mostly in Africa and South Asia -- is extremely tart. I'm used to it being paired with spicy curries, where its sour flavor brightens the heat and sweetness of the curry spices. Here, though, the very small amount of fragrant coriander that Ottolenghi includes was totally overwhelmed by the tart murkiness of the tamarind.

And those caraway seeds? They sure felt out of place, and it's not at all clear what Ottolenghi was aiming for by including two teaspoons of them. Instead of caraway, I'd add a tablespoon or two of my favorite curry powder (currently Penzey's), maybe a pinch or two of saffron, and possibly a tablespoon or two of Major Grey's Mango Chutney and go for something with a much more definite Indian/South Asian vibe.

As for that teaspoon of tomato paste that left an entire can of the stuff languishing in my refrigerator where it is likely to remain until mold begins to form? Can't see that it helped thicken the stew or boost the tomato flavor.  Next time I'd leave it out entirely.

It took a generous pour of olive oil at the end, as well as some extra help from my shaker of red pepper flakes, and every bit of the allegedly optional yogurt to bring the flavors together. You'll want LOTS of cilantro leaves, or sliced green onions as well.

The verdict: This one was easy to make (a 2 on the Ottolenghi Perceived Exertion Scale), quite serviceable as a weekday meal, not too expensive to try, but so dull that I am not likely to ever make it again.

Am hoping for better results next week when I attempt the nutty endive with Roquefort  (p. 160). See you then!

OT: great deal on A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg

When Gawker (or was it Buzzfeed) came out with its list of all-time favorite food memoirs, it was disappointing to see the omission of Molly Wizenberg's wonderful A Homemade Life, about her journey from graduate school student (French!) to finding her own writing voice, falling in love, starting a restaurant, and navigating the death of her father. Her writing is tender and affectionate, thoughtful and generous... and there are lots of fabulous recipes, as well. And you can get it today for your Kindle (or i-Pad) for just $1.99.

If you're uncertain about making the commitment, then perhaps this interview will inspire you to take the plunge ... you are least in for some interesting reading.

#6: Bittersweet Salad

♥

blood orange, bitter endive

sweet ricotta, pomegranate

purple pink passion bliss

♥

As we approach Valentine's Day, it has felt like a pleasant bit of serendipity to find myself reading The Orchid Thief. It's a story about many things: there's the story of John Laroche who was facing charges of having stolen protected orchids from the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve in southern Florida, while claiming that it was all perfectly legal because he was working for the Seminole Indians to whom they rightly belonged; there's the story of the orchid industry in south Florida, which is one of the most dysfunctional family stories you may have ever heard; it's the story about the treatment of Native Americans in Florida; and in many ways, it is the story of Florida. But mostly, it is the story of love and desire, and the lengths people are willing to go to sustain their obsessions. ... and isn't that kind of the point of Valentine's Day?

People may complain about Valentine's Day. Flowers and fuss, boxes of chocolates, sonnets and soliloquies ... all that romantic nonsense: "That's not real love," they say. "That's not what carries people through the hard times. That's not what carries them through the long haul."

Maybe not. But nonetheless, mustering whatever heat and passion it might take to bring yourselves back together after finding yourselves wherever the long haul has taken you sure seems worth an extravagant gesture. How long has it been, after all,  since you faced down a dragon for your beloved or dove into the deepest waters in search of the silvery word that would reach the center of their dreams? We all need practice, and Valentine's Day offers an excellent opportunity to stretch the range of our romantic expressiveness. We should seize every opportunity we get.

And this salad? Well, you might not have to slay dragons or scavenge rare blooms from the garden of an evil witch by moonlight or be willing to kiss a homely toad, but, nonetheless, this salad is a little bit of a test. Are you willing to drive to six different specialty providers on the day after a major snowstorm when the roads have not been particularly well-plowed in search of just the right mix of purple and reddish greens, the sweetest, creamiest ricotta, the one last pomegranate? Do you have the patience to carefully remove the membrane from each segment of blood orange so that no remnant of the bitter pith remains? Will you tenderly nurse the maple syrup and citrus juice over low heat until it reduces into the perfect dressing for the bitter greens? Will you be certain that it never burns?

If so, then enjoy the rewards, because every tantalizing bite of the resulting salad is easy to enjoy. The crisp bitter radicchio is a perfect foil for the sweet creaminess of the ricotta and the crunch of the toasted pine nuts, while the carefully segmented sections of blood oranges and pomegranate seeds add bright flavors and jewel-like accents to a truly, madly, deeply, gorgeous salad. Even the member of our household who asks -- every time -- what that green stuff is on the table swooned. Yes, I got a swoon. And a request for seconds. Definitely worth the effort.

Notes:

• The base of the salad is radicchio mixed in with whatever purple or red lettuces you can find. Ottolenghi recommends treviso, which is apparently some kind of endive with reddish veining, and I wish I could have found it, but by the time I made my sixth grocery stop of the day, I was running out of options, so I ended up picking out every reddish leaf from a carton of spring mix: some kind of red-leaf spinach, red chard, and a purple-tinged lettuce. From what I could tell, they worked just fine. I bet violets would be lovely, though. And confetti-like tendrils of purple micro-greens would be magnificent. Something that if we started them next January might be ready by mid-February, perhaps?

• For the dressing, Ottolenghi employs a technique he used with the winter slaw: combining citrus juices and maple syrup with a little salt and then reducing it over low heat until it is thick and syrupy.  After you remove it from the burner, you then strain the mixture, allow it to cool, and then finish the syrup with a splash of orange blossom water, which you can find in the middle eastern foods section of many grocery stores. Yes, I'm often suspicious about adding this floral water to recipes, but in this case the fragrant perfume of the water simply underscores the frankly seductive appeal of the whole salad. Use it -- you'll be glad you did.

• As for the ricotta, you're looking for something sweet and silky, with no graininess or chemical aftertaste. If possible, don't buy it unless you know you like it, or someone will let you taste it beforehand.

Next week: Swiss chard, chickpea, and tamarind stew (p. 148)