Posts by: Andrew Cohen
This is a flavorful mélange that is not wet enough to be a soup, but not dry, either. Although you could easily add more liquid for a soup or cook it dry as a side dish.
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Tagged with: Bintji potatoes • braise • carrots • collard greens • collards • cranberry beans • cranberry shelling beans • herbs • Italian parsley • parsley • potatoes • scallions • shelling beans • soup • stew • thyme • tomatoes
This version of pesto hails from Trapani in Sicily. It features almonds and, more unusual, tomatoes. There are many versions of this recipe-some use cherry tomatoes, some call for plum tomatoes, peeled, or not. Mortar and pestle versus food processor versus blender. 1 clove garlic versus 4. Cheese, or not. Well, here is another version- with regular sized tomatoes given a quick turn on the grill to add flavor and to ease peeling. If you don’t feel like heating the grill, see Chef’s Notes for an alternative to this. If you have nice sweet cherry tomatoes with tender skins, just use those instead, and skip the grilling, or blister them in a skillet filmed with a little oil. Use this pesto as you would with pasta, or try it on grilled vegetables such as peppers or with steamed or roasted cauliflower. Also great as a sandwich smear.
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This is a dish to be served as an appetizer or tapa would be, before the meal or as part of a series of small plates. It goes well with sherry, wines, or ice cold beer. Remember, since it is the sort of dish that can scatter easily, toast the bread so it is still soft and doesn’t crack and fall apart at the first bite. If you have leftovers, try them on a sandwich with fresh mozzarella and tomato.
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A quick dish to put together once the pesto is made, and that goes pretty quickly as well. Be sure to save a couple cups of pasta cooking water for the sauce before draining the noodles. Try to find linguini rigati (ridged linguini) for this dish as the ridges help hold a little more sauce.
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Serve this as a side dish, or use it to top pizza. It could be tossed with romaine lettuce for a salad or the leaves could be left whole and filled with, or use this to top bruschetta or crostini. If using for anything but pizza, try the Quickles option. The cool crunch and the bracing tartness of the vinegar is a wonderful foil to the plush textures and oil rich flavors of the pesto and peppers.
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Tagged with: Bintje potatoes • cauliflower • Desiree potatoes • fish • lettuce • potatoes • red leaf lettuce • romano beans • salad • scallions • Spanish • vinaigrette
This is a celebration of Spanish products, and is great with big flavors such as the tuna in this salad. Try this dressing with grilled fish, poached chicken, shrimp, or vegetables like cauliflower or broccoli. If you do not have the confit garlic, you can leave it out or use a small amount of fresh garlic.
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This is a dish where a vegetable replaces a typical sauce of a highly seasoned liquid bound or thickened in some manner. Here, the chopped broccoli is braised in garlic oil until meltingly soft, so it is mildly sweet and a little nutty, then it is tossed with confit garlic cloves for richness and a smooth garlic flavor (minus the garlic “heat”), and then roasted almonds are added for crunch and to amplify the nuttiness of the broccoli. This makes a perfect foil to the briny sweetness of fresh halibut. Or any other firm fleshed fish you care to try, such as salmon, cod, etc. Also, it is a great way to use vegetables in a role other than just a side.
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Another iteration of “Honey Lacquered Cauliflower”. This one is quite easy and gives a subtler variation to pan cooking it. It also yields a beautiful golden color, which orange cauliflower could accentuate. Marinating time is important to the success of this dish, so plan a little ahead so there is at least a half hour for marinating.
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Confit refers to both a dish as well as a method of cooking. To confit means to cook slowly in very low temperature fat or oil (usually) until meltingly tender. With garlic, the process makes it meltingly tender and mild, leaving flavor without heat. This makes it ideal for adding to salad dressing, mashed potatoes, mayonnaise, or smearing on toast. The other point to making confit garlic is the oil itself that you cook the garlic in. It becomes suffused with a lovely garlic flavor that is mild without being hot. You can use this oil as a base for cooking or as part of a salad dressing. It is also the base for slow-cooked broccoli or cauliflower. Use fresh garlic rather than the stuff that comes in plastic tubs.* See Chef’s Note’s for a tip about getting the garlic smell off your hands.
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Tagged with: garlic
This recipe produces a smooth textured broccoli that is a bit sweet and nutty tasting, with a lovely garlic perfume without the heat that garlic usually has. The secret is in the use of the garlic confit and the oil from that to slow poach the broccoli. This dish is a great base for a “sauce” for roasted fish such as halibut or salmon. This recipe can be used on cauliflower as well. One of the key elements to this dish is using low temperatures to avoid the swampy smell brassicas can emit.
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Although this dish originally was made to stuff chicken, it is quite good on it’s own as a side dish. The goat cheese is a nice option, but the dish is fine without it. Pine nuts work well in lieu of pistachios. This stuffing works great in whole chickens, chicken breasts, pork chops, fish, or even big pasta shells.
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This dish is great as a combination of two recipes, but the chicken is quite good without the stuffing, and the stuffing makes a nice side dish on its own, as well. Lemon infused olive oil is available at gourmet shops, better grocery stores, and you can find some locally made at various farmer’s markets. Agrumato is an excellent commercial brand and Colline di Santa Cruz is produced in the Santa Cruz area by Valencia Creek Farms. You can even make something that approaches it on your own by infusing oil with just the peel, but it is worth the money to have a bottle of this on hand.
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This is the classic Ligurian version of pasta with pesto from the area where pesto as we know it today was “invented”. Some recipes will tell you to cook the potatoes and beans in the water with the pasta, but that could over cook them, so here they are cooked until almost done and then the pasta is cooked separately. If you use fresh pasta, cook them together by all means.
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Tagged with: basil • Bintje potatoes • cheese • filet beans • pasta • pesto • potatoes • romano beans • Romanze potatoes
Although the notion of the apricots may seem odd, they are a nice contrast to the slightly bitter lettuce and earthy beets, and the acid is nice against the cheese. Sort of like using dried cranberries or raisins in a salad, but brighter. Whatever you use, the cheese should be a lightly crumbly and not too salty. Think in terms of little logs of chevre, a less briny feta, or even ricotta salata grated.
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This is a dish inspired by the flavors of Morocco. The nice thing about it is that most of the components are things that last a long time, and you might have them in the back of the refrigerator or the pantry. If you have fresh tomatoes use them, but there is no shame in using good quality canned for this. Using fresh tomatoes will make the dish brighter tasting, and they might take longer to cook down to a sauce consistency.
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This is a quick and simple dish that is all about the balance between the spiciness, the basil flavor, and the background of sweetness and umami notes. You can make it more or less spicy by changing the number of chilis, but there should always be a balance of flavor. There are many versions of this dish; this one is a distillation of time spent working in a Thai restaurant and many recipes. With or without the optional ingredients, the dish is still good. The optional kecap manis add depth of flavor and authenticity.
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This is for the Romaine, Roasted Beets, and Apricot salad, but would be a nice sauce for grilled chicken with grilled apricots, or pork chops. It would also be nice with a salad of butter leaf lettuces with apricots and a small round of fresh goat cheese rolled in bread crumbs and baked until golden served with toasts.
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Tagged with: apricot • beets • butter leaf lettuce • chicken • pork • romaine lettuce • salad • shallots • vinaigrette
Made to go on a potato salad, this will work with slaws and green salads as well.
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Think German Potato salad with a South West bent. The Purplette Quickles stand in for regular pickles, and the cilantro dressing takes the recipe South West.
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INGREDIENTS:
4-6 medium potatoes such as Desiree, Romanze, Sangre, or other firm starchy potato, cut into ½ to ¾ inch cubes (size should be similar to the cauliflower pieces) 1 head cauliflower, florets only, trimmed to around 1 inch (halve in needed) Olive oil as needed Salt and pepper to tasteContinue reading »
Tagged with: cauliflower • cilantro • Desiree potatoes • pesto • potato • romanz • sangre potatoes • saute • vegetarian
This can be eaten on its own as a bowl of “chili”, but it came about as a vegetarian filling for tacos or enchiladas. The inspiration for this came when Hatch and pasilla chilis were spotted at the local farmer’s market. The Green Sauce is not usually spicy, but you can adjust your chilis to make it so.
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