It seems fitting that I'm reading the Outlander books this summer ... and experiencing all kinds of recipes with greens! Every time I try a new recipe, I think of Claire and all her medicinal concoctions using herbs and greens and things that she foraged. I'm loving the books and since my daughter is way ahead of me in reading them, occasionally I can get her to give me hints about what will be happening!
This week's greens from the CSA are sorrel. It isn't often that I say I haven't eaten something, but until today, I had never knowingly tasted sorrel. I say 'knowingly' because my grandparents and a pair of elderly neighbors used to cook all kinds of pots of greens ... so it is possible that I've eaten them in childhood!
I am delighted by the flavor. They taste like a combination of Granny Smith tart apples, lemons and limes. The leaves that I cooked were about four inches long and I chopped the stems right with the leaf. After a little study, I found that folks love them in salads, cooked as pot greens and used in sauces. Because of the tart flavor, they are especially good served in sauces made with butter and cream and accompanying fatty fish like salmon. The tart flavor cuts the richness of the fatty ingredients. I also found that sorrel with ripen and burst a boil if you make the leaves into a poultice!
I might try that, but tonight I had my sorrel in a cream sauce over pasta, and here it is!
This recipe is enough for two servings of pasta or four side servings of pasta.
In 2 Tablespoons of butter, saute 2 Tablespoons of finely chopped sweet onion. When the onions are beginning to soften, add 2 cups of loosely packed sorrel leaves cut in a chiffonade style. As soon as the greens wilt, add 1/2 cup of dry white wine, 1 cup of half and half and 1/2 cup dry parmesan cheese. Add a dash of salt and a grind of black pepper and let this simmer until the sauce thickens ... about 4 - 6 minutes. When the sauce is done, add 1/2 cup chopped tomato (no juice or seeds) and stir it into the sauce.
I served this over penne pasta ... so the sauce would seep into the center of the noodles! Loved it!
This sauce resembles a Florentine sauce, but the flavor is different ... not so "icky" rich because the sorrel indeed cuts that out. It will be delicious served over any kind of meat, used as a sauce for crepes or stacked in a flour tortilla casserole with shredded chicken.
I'll be sharing this with a few of the parties listed in my sidebar, but I hope you'll hang around my home page to see my other posts!
