What a busy day! My other half is on the other side of the planet at the moment, so the boys and I have been busy entertaining ourselves with chores, playgroups, Karate classes and, of course, cooking and gardening. (If my writing is sporadic and disjointed this evening, you now know why these two lovies have been keeping me moving!)
How lucky we are to be able to support our local farm families by purchasing seeds and seedlings from them. To be able to know and to trust our local farmers, to rest assured that we are purchasing from reputable sources, it’s a pretty great thing.
Back to cooking…
We just about finished off the spinach tonight in a simple spinach fried rice with some leftover chicken from Sunday’s dinner. My boys are an easy sell when it comes to most things spinach, chicken, or rice. As dinner was pretty standard, I figured tonight I’d talk about my more experimental dish.
My Patriotic Potatoes Au Gratin on Sunday had some leftover sauce, which I poured over about half of my blanched fiddleheads.
Today, I decided to try an adaptation of an asparagus recipe with the other half of my blanched fiddleheads. There is this great recipe from Williams Sonoma’s book “Spring” for Asparagus Parmesan Cheese Puffs. These little treats are great hors d’oeuvres made with the dainty rounded teaspoonfuls as suggested in the recipe. We enjoy an adaptation at home where I make them a little bigger and they almost double as little cheesy biscuits. Sometimes I stray from the Gruyere and Parmesan suggested in the original recipe, sharp cheddar has been a nice stand-in, different.
I started by mixing together 3/4 cup milk and 5 tablespoons of butter in a small saucepan on medium heat.
Meanwhile, I sifted together 1/4 tsp of cayenne pepper, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and 3/4 cup of all purpose flour. When the milk mixture just started to boil, I removed it from the heat and stirred in the flour mixture, like so.
Next, 3 eggs went in, one at a time, followed closely by 3/4 cup of freshly grated Parmesan cheese.
I decided to skip the Gruyere or other second cheese today (the original recipe calls for 1/2 cup of shredded Gruyere). The dough cooled for a few before carefully dredging the fiddlehead curls through it (I say “carefully” as this is a sticky dough!)
Onto a sprayed piece of parchment paper atop a rimmed cookie sheet at 400 for 20 minutes or so, and you are good to go!
I’m not going to sell these with what I’m about to say, but these were yummy and strangely reminiscent of a fried clam! I even whipped out the tartar sauce! Hope you’ve enjoyed this experimental dish! See you tomorrow!