Cooking Asparagus and an Onion Tart With Deborah Madison ...

In Recipe Lab, a monthly feature, Julia Moskin chooses recipes from a top new cookbook and invites you to cook and discuss them. The book?s author will then join Ms. Moskin and three of you in a live video chat that everyone can watch. This month?s book is Deborah Madison?s ?Vegetable Literacy.?

The chef and gardener Deborah Madison has been writing almost entirely about vegetables for more than 25 years. Home cooks like me, who use her magisterial book ?Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone? regularly, may think there is no need for another vegetable cookbook in this lifetime. We are wrong.

This new book, ?Vegetable Literacy? (Ten Speed Press, 2013, $40), looks at the universe of vegetables differently, breaking it down into botanical families ? the Carrots (carrot, celery, fennel, parsnips), the Sunflowers (sunchoke, cardoon, artichoke, endive, escarole, lettuce) and so on ? in a way that is both interesting and extremely helpful. At first, Ms. Madison said, she was writing a collection of research, not recipes, in part to train herself to be a better gardener. Then, she thought, ?Wouldn?t it be useful to explain how these families interact when they meet in the kitchen?? Knowing, for example, that chard, spinach and beet greens are in the same botanical family (the Goosefoot), but that kale and broccoli rabe are in a different one (the Cabbage) helps a cook manage all that dizzying produce from the farmers? market.

We?re going to explore two springtime recipes from the chapter titled, ?The (Former) Lily Family?: a fragrant onion tart, and asparagus with salsa verde and scarlet onions.

Ms. Madison is a Zelig of the West Coast food revolution: she graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz, cooked at the Tassajara Zen Center and at Chez Panisse in the 1970s, was the founding chef of Greens restaurant in San Francisco in 1979, and has lived outside Santa Fe, N.M., for 20 years. The black bean chili from her first book, ?The Greens Cookbook? (1987), remains the best vegetarian chili in the history of my kitchen.

So please join Ms. Madison and me to talk about cooking: make either or both recipes, then return here to watch a video chat with Ms. Madison on Tuesday, April 16 at 3:30 p.m. Eastern. In the meantime, post any questions, thoughts or feedback on the recipes in the comments section below. Let us know if you liked them, how you served them, whether you made any changes to the recipe, or what you might do differently next time. If you want the chance to join the video chat with Ms. Madison, sign up to participate here.

Last month?s Recipe Lab, with Nigella Lawson, is here.

Ingredients

For the filling:

• 1 1/2 pounds onions (about 3 medium), preferably white
• 2 slices of bacon, cut crosswise into small pieces, optional
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 heaping teaspoon fresh thyme leaves, or 2 pinches dried
• Sea salt
• Black pepper
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup cr?me fra?che or cream
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 cup grated aged Gouda or Gruy?re cheese

For the crust:

• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons white whole-wheat or spelt flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 6 tablespoons butter, cut into small bits

Method

• 1. To make the filling, cut onions in half, peel them, and if they are strong, put them in a bowl of cold water. It doesn?t take long for that to reduce their sting. When you?re ready, finely dice them. (White onions usually aren?t as strong as yellow ones.)
• 2. If you?re using bacon, fry it until browned and nearly crisp, then scoop it out to drain on a paper towel. Throw out bacon grease, wipe out pan, and add 2 tablespoons butter. When melted, add onions, thyme and 3/4 teaspoon salt. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, about 25 minutes in all. At first the onions will be very moist, but after 10 minutes their water will have cooked off and they?ll begin to color. They needn?t be caramelized, but just take on a faint golden hue. When done, let them cool slightly. Taste for salt ? they?ll be very sweet so you might want to add more ? and season well with pepper.
• 3. While onions cook, whisk eggs with cr?me fra?che and milk. Stir in cooled onions, cheese and bacon, if using.
• 4. To make the crust, put flour and 1/4 teaspoon salt in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Add 6 tablespoons butter and turn mixer to low speed until butter has broken into small, pebble-size pieces. Drizzle in ice water until dough looks clumpy and damp. (You?ll use about 3 tablespoons or less if the butter was soft.) Form dough into a disk or a rectangle to correspond to the shape pan you?re using. You have a few choices: a 9-inch tart pan, a square tart pan, or a rectangular one (11 x 8 1/2 inches), all with removable bottoms. Wrap dough in plastic and refrigerate.
• 5. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Roll dough to fit your chosen tart pan, then drape dough in pan. Neatly press dough up the sides of the pan and shape it. Set it on a sheet pan. When oven is ready, pour onion mixture into tart pan, even out mixture, then bake until surface is golden and browned in places, 45 to 50 minutes. Let cool to warm before cutting into slices and serving.

Source: Adapted from ?Vegetable Literacy,? by Deborah Madison

Ingredients

• 1 small red onion, sliced into thin rounds
• A few tablespoons white wine vinegar or champagne vinegar, more to taste
• Sea salt
• 1 1/2 pounds asparagus
• 1/4 cup chopped parsley
• 2 tablespoons chopped tarragon
• 1 tablespoon capers, rinsed
• 1 wide band orange zest, finely slivered and blanched in boiling water for 10 seconds
• 4 to 5 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 1 tablespoon orange juice
• Black pepper

Method

• 1. Separate sliced onion rings and toss with vinegar and a pinch of salt. Set aside in refrigerator.
• 2. If asparagus spears are thick, peel stalks and cut off tough stem ends. If they are thin, snap off bottom of each stalk where it breaks easily and trim ends. Simmer asparagus with water to cover until bright green but still a little firm, about 3 minutes for thin asparagus, 5 minutes or longer for fat. It can be a little underdone. Remove to a towel to dry while you make the sauce. It will finish cooking as it sits.
• 3. Put parsley, tarragon and capers in a bowl. Finely dice half the orange zest, then dice half the pickled onion. Add diced zest and onion to bowl. Stir in oil, mustard, orange juice and vinegar to taste. Season with salt and pepper.
• 4. Lay asparagus on a platter. Ladle sauce over stems and tips and finish with remaining slivered orange zest and pickled onion rings. Serve at room temperature or slightly chilled.

Source: Adapted from ?Vegetable Literacy,? by Deborah Madison

Source: http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/04/cooking-asparagus-and-onions-with-deborah-madison/

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