June’s Chef’s Kisses
Strawberries (and cream) + peas (and pork, pasta, potatoes, polenta)
Hello friends! I don’t often share this, but I like to practice naming something I'm grateful for every day. Sometimes it’s the apartment I write my recipes from, other days it’s the fan next to my bed or the fresh strawberries I’ve enjoyed with my morning coffee. But, today, and every last day of the month, it’s all of you who are receiving this newsletter. Thank you so much for being here and for your support!
For those that are new, this is my end-of-the-month newsletter where I discuss my monthly ‘chef’s kiss moments’ (aka all the lovely and wonderful things I’ve been up to, mostly food/cooking related, but not exclusively) and share one recipe that I’ve been loving. This month’s recipe is for popovers, my ideal carb-y vehicle for so many things I ate this month, both sweet and savory.
Peas
Last month I spoke about my excitement for forthcoming shelling peas. I missed their sweet and grassy flavor so much this winter. The day after sending out last month’s newsletter, I went to the market and there they were. I quickly made up for lost time. Peas went with everything this month: cheesy tarts and galettes, pasta, risotto, potatoes, bread, and polenta. To keep my gushing to a minimum, I’ve made a list of all of my pea creations with a short (and important) note on cooking them fresh.
Cooking fresh peas: The key is cooking them very briefly. Just like a perfectly ripe avocado, there is a sliver of time when perfect green creamy goodness usurps immature flavor, blandness, and hard or mushy textures. A perfectly cooked pea has a light bite and a gorgeous sweet-grassy flavor. To best achieve and maintain that texture, I either like to:
1) Blanch them by cooking them in boiling water until they rise to the surface and then transferring them to a bowl of very cold water.
2) Cook them very briefly in a pan (usually lid on) with a tiny bit of water and butter for about 30-45 seconds, and then quickly removing them from the heat (they will carryover cook, so be sure to remove them just before they’re done while they’re still a little firm).
Tart: This was the first thing I made with my market peas. It’s my Pea Parmigiano Custard Tart, a favorite of mine. I made it even better this year by reducing the amount of custard and adding a whole mess of peas on top.
Galette: These were exceptionally delicious. One dish was crêpes with melted Comté draped with ham and served with peas on top. The other was a cheddar Mornay sauce baked on top of my galette dough. I added in some peas, layered ham on top, and decorated with a few more spare peas. This was incredibly indulgent but one of my favorite bites of the month.
Pasta: In continuing to pair peas with pork, I also made some lovely pasta dishes. One was a fresh egg yolk pasta with mortadella, peas, and brown butter. Very simple, and very delicious. It was sweet from the peas and browned butter, and salty from the mortadella and parmigiano. I added the peas to the bit of pasta water in the pot after draining the pasta. I also added the brown butter and the pasta back in, and the peas were briefly cooked as a silky sauce formed.
The other pasta was a classic carbonara, just mixing the peas in after draining with a bit of pasta water and guanciale fat. Just finishing the whole thing with egg yolk and cheese.
Pizza dough: yes pizza dough is great for pizza, but it’s also great for sandwiches. First up a pea-za (thank you to the inspired commenter on my Instagram). Just some sourdough pizza dough baked up naked, topped with some mortadella, buratta, peas, and bush basil (i love it so much, it’s so fragrant). The combo was so good i had it twice, the other version i baked into a loaf of sorts, opened and stuffed it with a pea pistachio pesto, burrata, arugula, some more blanched peas, and mortadella. I can’t pick a favorite version, both were fantastic.
Polenta: The other day I fried up some leftover polenta and topped it with blanched peas and a draping of prosciutto. I ate two plates but could have eaten four.
Potatoes: Potatoes and peas are a classic combination for a reason. These were probably some of the best dishes I have cooked all year.
For the first dish, I whipped up a sauce of butter, basil, white wine, garlic, and sorrel. I topped this with some perfectly boiled potatoes and peas tossed in a little more butter. I served it with a perfectly cooked piece of cod (cooked en papillote with some white wine and lemons).
As soon as the baby new potatoes arrived at the farmers market (these are my all-time favorites, the flavor is just so much more intense) I thought it would be fun to make a dish where all of the components looked like each other. I prepared the new potatoes in the fondant style (searing followed by braising with stock and–in this case–lots of tarragon) and seared some baby summer squashes and scallops. I plated this up with some blanched peas tossed with more tarragon and chiffonaded sorrel. So delicious.
Finally, some lovely chicken was given a Schnitzel treatment. I served it with steamed and buttered new potatoes, shelled peas, some aioli with fresh heads of garlic, and a bit of lemon.
Strawberries
Last year, in my June Chef’s Kisses newsletter I wrote about my intense love for strawberries and their ability to make even the most mundane moments sweet. This spring, I also ate them as often as I possibly could: with my coffee for breakfast, in my icebox cake recipe, in a shortcake and a sundae, in a variation on my tiramisu ice cream sandwich recipe, on some steaming hot vanilla-sugar dusted popovers filled with cool whipped yogurt, and in a *surprise* recipe coming next week…
As always, I also made a batch of raw strawberry jam, a requirement every June and the only jam I make every year. You can find more details about how to make it in last year's June newsletter. I immediately enjoyed it on a PB&J (with my favorite sandwich loaf bread – a sourdough potato brioche-ish loaf), then on scones with butter, and in popovers with butter. Many bites of strawberry heaven this month. And more on those popovers below…
Popovers
Something came over me this month, namely an obsession with popovers. It began when I made a Sunday roast with peas, popovers, and roast chicken. The popovers were eh, a bit on the dry side, so I decided to make them again a few days later, and after a few tries I think I've mastered the art of the popover so I'm sharing the recipe with you here. They can be enjoyed with so many things. Get creative!
P.S. Please do note that the batter gets made the night before. This can be annoying, but it means all you have to do the following day is cook!
Makes 6 standard-sized popovers in a popover pan or 9-10 smaller popovers in a standard cupcake tin (aka 3.5oz or 100ml)
Ingredients:
3 large eggs (approximately 150-160g)
325g whole milk
150g all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp diamond crystal kosher salt (or 4.5g of any other salt you want to use)
45g clarified butter or ghee or lard
Ingredient ideas for serving!
Scrambled eggs with chives
Butter and jam
A sugar tossing (vanilla sugar if you have it) with macerated berries and whipped cream (I made a yogurt whipped cream similar to this recipe but with more yogurt, less heavy cream, and powdered sugar instead of syrup for some stability)
Make the batter!
Start the batter the night before.
In your blender add your eggs, milk, flour, and salt. Blend to combine. Then transfer the blender bowl (with the lid on) to the fridge overnight.
If you don’t have a blender: In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs and milk until no streaks from the eggs remain. Then whisk in the flour in three stages (this helps to ensure there are no lumps). Cover the bowl with cling film (or transfer it to a storage container). Leave it in the fridge overnight.
Bake!
Bake your popovers the following day.
Preheat your oven to 425f and set a rack on the lowest rung. Once hot, grab your clarified butter (or ghee or lard) and put some into each divot of the popover pan/cupcake tin. Transfer the pan/tin to the oven and set a timer for 2 minutes.
In the meantime, remove your popover batter from the fridge and re-blend or whisk to re-emulsify (it will have separated). If your batter is in a bowl, transfer it to a measuring cup for easy pouring.
Remove the popover pan/cupcake tin from the oven, there should be a film of fat in the bottom, pour your batter into each divot. You are looking to fill the divots about 2/3rds-3/4s of the way up (I prefer to aim for 2/3rds and then divide the remaining batter up as equally as possible).
Transfer the popovers to the lowest rack in your oven and set a timer for 18 minutes if you are using a popover pan, and 14 minutes if you are using a cupcake tin. Once your timer goes off, turn the oven down to 350f and set a timer for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, grab a sharp knife, open the oven, and quickly poke a hole in the top of each popover (so steam can escape and they don’t collapse in on themselves). Close the oven door and set a timer for 3 minutes.
Remove the popovers from the oven and let them rest for a minute (this will make them stick less when pulling them out of the pan). Enjoy with whichever toppings you desire!
Slices of joy!
It has been so nice having tiramisu praliné ice cream sandwiches and leftover s’mores ice cream cake packed into pint containers in my freezer. Both are great afternoon pick-me-ups in my very hot and muggy apartment (or for lunch when the heat has taken my appetite.)
I’m so excited to share next month’s strawberry and apricot focused recipe with you. Both of them took a lot more testing than I had bargained for, but the final result was well worth it. Stay tuned and subscribe to get the recipes straight to your inbox <3
Dining out diaries
Shang Gong Chu 尚宫厨 quite possibly has the best duck I have ever had the pleasure of eating. It is glistening, has unreal crispy skin, and the juicy interior is perfect (and the Hunan-style eggplant made for a great side dish).
Smithereens has been on my list for a few months now and I finally got the chance to go! Théo and I loved everything we ate here, and we ordered over half the menu. If you love clams please do not skip their clam rice, it’s a pretty perfect dish. Also, their celery soda float is not to be missed if you’re interested in sweet-savory desserts.
coincidentally, the staff at Smithereens and I have similar music tastes. While eating dessert, they played “BREEZIN’” which was my favorite song this month. I don't have a car, but if I did, I would be blasting this while driving with the windows down on some country roads or the highway. Something about this song just screams summer-time-windows-down to me. And now I guess it will also remind me of having a delicious celery soda float too. Give it a listen :)
My last bit of exciting personal news is that I finally finished my 1kg jar of Edmond Fallot Dijon mustard that I bought exactly a year ago this month (a hefty amount was used for the food at my wedding).
And to send us all off into July, here is a very special moment I had while on a run:
Incredible feast! Thank you for the inspiration!!
I could eat that pile of strawberries and coffee for breakfast every morning and never tire of it