Spring Vegetable Farfalle for Meatless Monday

It is officially spring in Connecticut. It's 70 degrees out, the sun is high in the sky even at 5:00 p.m., and we have mini-forests of crocus all along our driveway. Oh look! Our spring onions and chives are coming in! At last, at last, it's spring at last!

And it's Monday, so what better meal to make for this beautiful spring day than something for Meatless Monday? This Food and Wine recipe seemed like the perfect gift when it arrived in our email box last week and we saved it for a day just like this one. As usual, we made some adjustments based our tastes and what we had on hand.

What we loved about this recipe was the wonderful fresh taste it gets from the green vegetables, seasonal herbs and tangy lemon. While we enjoyed it hot, we could see gracing our summer picnic table as a pasta salad alongside some barbecue. Mmmm...mmmm.

Spring Vegetable Farfalle

adapted from this recipe from Food and Wine

Ingredients:

2 slices white sandwich bread, finely chopped

1/2 cup olive oil

2 tablespoons snipped chives

1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon

kosher salt

freshly ground black pepper

1 bunch broccolini

1 pound mini-farfalle

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 fennel bulb - halved, cored and thinly sliced

juice from 1/2 lemon

2 drops lemon oil

Preheat the oven to 350. On a baking sheet, toss the bread with 1/4 cup of the oil and toast for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring once, until golden. Let cool, then stir in half each of the chives and tarragon. Season the crumbs with salt and pepper and set aside. In a pot of boiling salted water, cook the broccolini until tender, 1 minute; using tongs, transfer to a cutting board and coarsely chop. Boil the pasta in the broccolini water until al dente. Drain, reserving 1 cup of the cooking water. In a deep skillet or wok, melt the butter in the remaining 1/4 cup of oil. Add the garlic, fennel and broccolini and cook over moderate heat until the fennel is crisp-tender, about 6 minutes. Add the pasta, lemon juice and cooking water and season with salt and pepper. Cook over moderate heat until the water is nearly absorbed. Stir in the remaining herbs and lemon oil. Sprinkle the pasta with the bread crumbs just before serving.

Roast Wild Boar

"Meat from feral swine." That's what it said on the package of the D'Artagnan Wild Boar Mini-Roast we picked up a couple of days ago at our favorite supermarket. That awful scene from the movie Hannibal aside, there was no way we weren't going to buy it after reading that. That's practically a double-dog-dare!

We've had boar in the past, particularly in Tuscany where it is commonly served roasted, in ragus, and in sausages. And although we've never made it, we decided to treat it essentially like a little 1.5-pound roast pork, which in many ways, it is.

We made a bed of vegetables (namely onion, garlic, fennel, celery, and carrots) tossed in olive oil and placed in a small roasting pan. We seasoned the meat with salt and pepper and seared it on all sides in a cast-iron pan on the stovetop. After it was nicely browned, we rubbed the boar with an herb-garlic-and-olive oil paste, set it on top of the vegetables with a bundle made from the remaining herbs, added some water, covered the pan and roasted it for a half-hour at 375.

We used oregano, thyme and rosemary, and those flavors were prominent in every bite of meat and vegetables. The vegetable mix was the perfect accompaniment to the boar, particularly the sweet, flavorful fennel. It was a lot like roast pork, except the meat is much leaner and richer tasting. We will certainly make this dish again, or come up with other ways to use this exquisite, novel product.

Ingredients:

Note: for vegetables, we used 1/2 fennel bulb, 1 white onion, 2 cloves garlic, 2 large carrots, 2 celery stalks

Note: for herbs, we used a bundle of thyme, 3 sprigs of rosemary, and a handle of fresh oregano leaves

approximately 3 cups of roughly chopped vegetables (see note)

1/2 cup olive oil, divided

salt and pepper to taste

1.5-lb. wild boar mini-roast

fresh herbs (see note)

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 cup water

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Toss the chopped vegetables in 1/4 cup of olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Lay them in the bottom of a small roasting pan and set aside. Heat a skillet on high heat until very hot. Season the roast with salt and pepper. Add a tablespoon of olive oil to the skillet and sear the roast on all sides. While the meat is searing, take about half of the amount of fresh herbs you have and chop them finely. Tie the remaining herbs together with butcher's twine and throw into the roasting pan. Place the chopped herbs in a small bowl, and add the minced garlic and the remaining olive oil; stir to form a loose paste. After the boar has been seared, rub it all over with the paste and set atop the vegetables in the roasting pan. Add the water to the pan, then cover the pan and roast for 1/2 hour, or until internal temperature reaches 155-160 with a meat thermometer. Allow to rest before slicing and serving with the vegetables. 

Farewell to The Minimalist: Tomato, Fennel and Crab Soup

As you may know, Mark Bittman's New York Times column, The Minimalist, ran for the last time last week. The column was required reading in our house, where, like Bittman, we are proponents of good eating through simple cooking. To that end, we wanted to make one of Bittman's recipes with items we already had or could easily, and cheaply, get. It was the fennel left over from our wild boar roast that pointed us in the right direction. That, a coupon for some crabmeat, and items from our pantry, was everything we needed to make his Tomato, Fennel and Crab soup. This recipe is copied from epicurious.com. We'll miss The Minimalist but look forward to more from Mark Bittman.

Note: The only change we made was to include fewer onions (about 3 cups instead of 3 1/2).

Ingredients:

1/4 cup olive oil

3 1/2 cups chopped onions

2 medium fennel bulbs with fronds; bulbs cored, thinly sliced, fronds chopped and reserved

3 large garlic cloves, minced

2 14 1/2-ounce cans diced tomatoes in juice

2 cups (or more) vegetable broth

8 ounces fresh crabmeat, picked over

Additional olive oil

4 1/2-inch-thick slices pain rustique or rustic whole wheat bread, toasted

Heat 1/4 cup oil in heavy large pot over medium-high heat. Add onions, fennel slices, and garlic; sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper. Sauté until onions and fennel are tender, stirring often and adjusting heat to medium if browning too quickly, about 15 minutes. Add tomatoes with juice and 2 cups broth and bring to boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer until flavors blend and vegetables are very tender, about 15 minutes. Stir in crabmeat and add more broth by 1/4 cupfuls to thin soup, if desired; simmer just until heated through, 3 to 4 minutes. Season soup with salt and pepper. Divide soup among bowls. Sprinkle each with chopped fennel fronds. Drizzle each serving with oil. Serve with toasts.