Garlic Scape and Salmon Frittata

This is a summer favorite in the Kosher, She Eats kitchen. We grow our own garlic scapes and jalapeños and Kosher Hubby cold smokes his own salmon. (Yes, I know... overachievers.) One Sunday morning we decided to forgo our usual cheesey eggs (another KSE kitchen invention) and make frittatas with whatever was in our fridge. I will share the 'recipe' and preparation instructions below but first some ideas and explanations.What are garlic scapes? There are two main varieties of garlics and many sub-varieties. These two main varieties are hard-neck and soft-neck. Soft-neck garlic looks just like a mutant, large blade of grass. The magic is below ground with the garlic clove. Hard-neck garlics are neat because they give you TWO edible products. The first is the scape, which if left unpicked will Soba in Scapes_Originalbecome a flower with little bulbils (teeny tiny garlics). However, you can cut them off and eat them. They taste like a cross between garlic and green onion. Obviously, the second product you get from a hard-neck is the garlic clove. Here's a picture of our Kosher puppy with our garlics from last season. You can see the scape begins to curl and are fully curled when they are ready.Okay, ideas... this is sort of a kitchen sink dish. You can put what ever you want in here. We choose jalapeños, scapes, cheddar cheese, and smoked salmon because that is what we had in the house. You can use other types of peppers (hot or sweet), regular garlic, mushrooms, onions, spinach, goat cheese, whatever you want!How many eggs? Well... it's a safe bet to do two eggs per person. It depends on how many people, how big your pan is, and how hungry you are. For the larger size pan that we have, we would recommend six eggs. I am not going to put a quantity below, you can toss as much or as little in as you want!As for pans... we used our older non-stick skillets and no additional oil or spray however, this recipe calls for them to go into the oven SO there are a few caveats.1. Non-stick in the oven decreases the lifetime of the pan. We decided to designate a couple of our pans for oven usage, knowing that they will have to be replaced sooner. Fortunately, non-stick isn't too expensive.2. NO PLASTIC HANDLES IN THE OVEN!!Other option: you can, instead of using a non-stick pan, heavily coat a stainless steel pan with oil/butter/non-stick spray. The goal here is to have the frittata slide right out at the end and not make a mess. You will cut this like a pie, so staying together is a virtue for this recipe. We love this pan (this size is the smaller size we use) - Professional Non-Stick Restaurant Frying Pan Size: 8"- the rubber handle is removable![ingredients]Preparation:

  1. Set your oven to broil
  2. Dice jalapeños and chop scapes then toss them in the pan with butter to sauté. Sauté for approx. 5 minutes.
  3. Crack your eggs into a bowl (NOT THE PAN) and beat them together with approx 1 tablespoon of milk or cream (or half and half if you are out) per egg.
  4. Pour the egg mixture into the pan with the veggies and let cook for a minute or two and then layer the salmon on top.
  5. Grate cheese on top of the mixture. Add as much as you like.
  6. Here's the tricky part... when to put in the oven - let the eggs cook until they begin to set up on the outer ring of the pan. It is now time to put it in an oven. Put it on the top rack, right under the broiler.
  7. Keep watch on the frittata and pull it out when it begins to get golden brown on the top.
  8. Pull the frittata out and serve immediately. You can top with chopped chives or dill. We did one of each and really enjoyed both!

The process in pictures: 1_Jap scapes salmon 2_chopped 3_saute 4_eggs in 5_fish in 6_cheese See it starting to set up/cook on the sides? Time for the oven! 7_after oven Post oven... no flipping necessary! 8_chives Those are chives! 9_dill And that is dill!

Winter Soup

Well. It's cold. No doubt about that. So today, Hubby and I decided to make a yummy minestrone soup. Actually what happened was, Hubby wanted to make a butternut squash gratin (yes, recipe coming) and I remembered a recent recipe from Real Simple for a minestrone soup with butternut squash. Perfect pair for dinner!Please forgive the lack of pictures... the Kosher, She Eats kitchen was NOT clean enough to get any good pics. I promise we will have some new ones for you the next time we make this!Of course, nothing in the Kosher, She Eats kitchen could be simple... We don't eat pasta or bread (regularly) plus we wanted to use what we grew/had canned in season so we adjusted the original recipe. Here is our version of the Winter Minestrone. One thing... I totally 'free-handed' this recipe... do what feels right. I love carrots in soups so I added more. If you love beans, add beans or squash or whatever!Ingredients:

  • Olive oil
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • kosher salt and black pepper
  • 1 14.5-ounce can diced tomatoes
  • 1 half pint (8oz) jar of homemade tomato sauce (yes, you can use canned... but NOT PASTA SAUCE, actual tomato sauce... we will get you canning next season. It's easy!)
  • Some butternut squash, cut into 1-inch pieces (The other recipe calls for a small squash... I didn't have that much since we were using it mainly for the gratin.)
  • 6-7 medium carrots, chopped
  • Some green beans (we used a sandwich bag of green beans we had frozen during the season. If you do not have this luxury, grab some frozen ones at the store. They are usually flash frozen at the peak of the season.)
  • 2 15-ounce cans navy beans, rinsed (or pinto, or kidney... whatever bean you want... I wouldn't do black beans though... personal preference. Also... I forgot to rinse mine and the world kept spinning.)
  • Vegetable stock
  • 1 3-inch piece Parmesan rind (optional), plus grated Parmesan for serving
  • 1/2 Savoy cabbage, chopped

Preparation:

  1. Before you start... get a big soup pot. Don't do this step in a frying pan... keep the flavors in there! Okay, heat some olive oil in your SOUP POT. (I say vociferously because at first I didn't then switched pans... don't bother to get that frying pan dirty.) Add the onion, about ¾ teaspoon salt, and about ¼ teaspoon pepper. Sauté, stirring frequently, until soft and nearly translucent (about 8 to 10 minutes).
  2. Add the tomatoes and their juices as well as your tomato sauce to the pot with the onions. Simmer until thickened (about 6 to 8 minutes... I left it on a bit longer as I was prepping the other ingredients).
  3. Add squash, carrots, beans, green beans, 8(ish) cups vegetable stock, and Parmesan rind, if desired, and bring to a boil. Then turn it down to a simmer, stirring occasionally. You want the vegetables to get tender. This could take about 20 to 25 minutes, however, since I put mine up early in the afternoon, I kept it on a low simmer for more than an hour. I let the veggies get soft and even added some more vegetable stock to bring it to the right soup-y-ness.
    1. NOTE: If you added the Parmesan rind (which I totally recommend trying, if you are serving a dairy meal) continually taste the soup. The rind really imparts A LOT of flavor and you might want to take it out before the cooking time is up. We left it in for maybe 30 minutes.
  4. About 30 minutes or so before you plan to  serve the soup, add cabbage. Simmer until the cabbage isn't too crunchy.
  5. Serve with grated Parmesan on top.

Ok, like I said, we were a little loosey goosey about this recipe. And it totally worked. I put it up around 3 and we ate it around 6:30. It stayed warm the whole time but make sure the liquid doesn't boil out!! It really didn't take long to prep and made everything smell great while we were cleaning our house. After I put the soup up, we had extra butternut squash (from the gratin) and we threw it in. Also, the first night we ate this, the cabbage had a bit of a crunch to it (delish!) but at subsequent "eatings" the cabbage was less crunchy (surprisingly still delish)!If you don't use the rind or top with Parm, this is a great parve soup. And it's fabulous as a dairy soup as well!One last tip for you... Start with one bowl. We got so excited the first night we each ate two... and the rest of our dinners which left us totally over stuffed! This soup is SUPER filling.Enjoy!Kosherly yours,Kosher T & Kosher Hubby