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This dish is a medley of concentrated late-summer flavors. The fresh tomatoes are cooked down to concentrate their sweetness, and the polenta is made from stock made from corn cobs which really brightens its flavor.
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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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INGREDIENTS:
1-1/2 cups carrots, cut diagonally into 1/2-inch pieces 2 Tbs pine nuts ¼ tsp crushed red pepper flakesContinue reading »
Very simple, but lots of flavor. Watching the broccoli blanch so it does not overcook, and cutting it to the right size, is key here. Don’t overdo the mint or it will overwhelm the dish. Use just enough to taste as an accent. Also, try to use as little oil as you can get away with for this dish as it helps the broccoli to stay firm and bright.
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Here is a riff on the now ubiquitous grocery-store deli salad. This is a great way to use the stems of broccoli, and could be made entirely with stems if you wish. If you do so, back off the volume by 2 cups or you will have a lot of slaw. This is one of those recipes that can be varied a lot for different but equally tasty results.
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This is a super simple slaw dressing that works with the Broccoli Slaw recipe, or any other slaw type salad with assertive flavors like broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, or beets. This is the closest thing to the dressings on slaws in grocery store deli’s I can come up with.
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This is a riff on a recipe from NoMAd by Daniel Humm and Will Guidara. I like how the dish explores the different textures of broccoli and different flavors based on temperature. The recipe takes a little bit of work, but no more than most people lavish on a meat course for a weekend dinner. So why not spend that attention on vegetables? Much of this work can be done ahead of time, with the cutting and fricco being done the day before, along with the steaming of the florets. You want broccoli with long stems for this recipe.
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This salad was inspired by a little plate a chef sent out one hot night almost thirty years ago. It was made with just the stems, peeled and cut into cubes, and was one of those things where the chef was being thrifty. I would have paid gladly for this great combination of cool crunch and silky, nutty flavored sauce.
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This recipe is actually based on a chicken dish, but instead the broccoli gets the chicken treatment. This dish can be served hot with dinner or cold in small amounts as salad/snack/appetizer. You could also just blanch the broccoli until just crisp-tender and drop it into ice-water to stop the cooking, and then toss it in the sauce ingredients which were cooked together earlier and allowed to cool.
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This dish is based on something from, I think, a Pierre Franey book a roomie had 30 or more years ago. I am not a huge fan of mayo on sandwiches, but I do love to use it as part of other things like dressing or this lovely golden glaze for fish. Really, there is only a little mayo per person, so it is not such a bad thing, and it glazes beautifully under the broiler. This dish can be prepped and cooked in the amount of time it takes to cook a pot of rice, and is a great way to show off the unique flavor of dill.
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Here is a salad with lots of contrasts, as well as room for lots of variations. If you have cilantro instead of basil, use that. Use a dressing with lime and cumin, or coriander and Meyer lemon. See Chef’s Notes for further ideas. For the pepper cress, use a really sharp thin bladed knife to “whittle” the leaves off the stems if your cress is in a bunch.
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This salad is a contrast of textures and flavor elements. Soft butter lettuce and crunchy radish. Bright clean flavors of radish and lettuce against the smoky charred notes of earthy funk laden scallions. This is nice with a big slab of well toasted country rye bread with plenty of really good butter on it flecked with large crystal salt such as Murray River or Sel de Guerande.
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Here, Butternut squash slices replace potatoes in variation of a typical gratin. Vegetable stock stands in for the usual dairy, and bread crumbs are there to soak up moisture and add some texture and loft. Chard adds a contrast to the sweetness of the squash, and you could mix potato slices into the squash slices if you wish to tone the sweetness down as well.
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These gnocchi are great with the “standard” brown butter with sage, but adding hazelnuts for depth and a little crunch make these memorable. A light tomato sauce with garlic would also be a good pairing.
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This is a dish based on one I learned at Chez Panisse. The hardest part of the dish is peeling the squash.* Once that is done it goes together in a snap. I tend to go with savory seasonings, but you could use cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, and orange juice as seasoning as well. These spices would go fine with garlic and pepper. Speaking of garlic, you can use a good quality garlic powder instead of the fresh if you wish.
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Inspired by Farmer’s Daughter
INGREDIENTS:
1 cup squash puree 1 cup heavy cream 1 cup sugar 3 beaten eggsContinue reading »
Here is a sauce that feels rich in the mouth and has big flavors. The texture of the sauce comes from the squash and onions, and there is no cream in it. This sauce was devised for topping red beets, but it would be fine for fish, chicken, or even pork. It would also be nice on pasta as a fun twist on the classic Pumpkin Ravioli with Sage Butter Sauce (see recipe for Pumpkin Ravioli on site). Stuff ravioli with chard and cheese, or add ground turkey or pork, and top with the sauce.
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There are a few variations of this dressing, and many stories as to its origin. The story that is generally accepted in the restaurant world is that Caesar Cardini invented the recipe “on the fly” once when the restaurant was packed and he was out of some ingredients. A quick scan of the pantry gave these ingredients along with the salad base, and then he prepared the salad at tableside for flair. Cardini family legend has it that Caesar did not put in anchovy as he didn’t like them. Supposedly these were added later by a relative. The salad traditionally is made with smaller whole leaves from closer to the center of the head, and the leaves were picked up or cut with knife and fork. I make the dressing without egg yolk because I am lazy. You can also substitute mayonnaise for the egg yolk. Yolk or mayo really do give you a much richer dressing that coats the leaves beautifully, but the flavor is still quite good without them. You will need to use more olive oil to get the right emulsification of the dressing instead.
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Caesar Salad
Quite popular in its original form, the Caesar Salad has enjoyed a renaissance that has lasted for over the last decade and then some. The salad has become a vehicle for everything from chicken to seafood to beef. There have been some versions that shared little with the original but the name and Romaine lettuce. Here is the stripped down version close to the original. The salad was supposedly first concocted from things Caesar Cardini had on hand at his restaurant when he was faced with a large party and was out of many ingredients. It was prepared tableside with much flair.
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When done with sweet tomatoes, these taste like candy, and are great as a dessert, or part of one. They work great with homemade vanilla ice cream or as part of a tart. I usually use plum tomatoes, but others will work as well. If the tomato is big, quarter it. This is less a recipe than a technique to follow. As you do this a couple times, you learn to adapt to the size of the tomatoes and the sweetness, or not, of them as well. You can change the herbs, play with oils, and even use different sugars such as a vanilla or lavender sugar.
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Okay, let’s face it. Insalata Caprese is a wonderful thing, but it has become a “classic”. So, in the spirit of keeping things new and fresh (heh), here is a twist. At the Aptos Farmer’s Market, I tasted an Amethyst Basil jelly from Fogline Farm, and immediately thought of this, especially since I had just gotten some heirloom tomatoes. There are a ton of recipes for basil and purple basil jelly/jam out there, and I think it is a great “secret ingredient” to have on hand for many things. This one is a nice amethyst color with a light body and just right scent. It is perfect for this salad.
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This frosting is used for the Apple Cake Muffins, or if you decide to turn the muffins back into a cake. The muffins/cake is not that sweet. The frosting definitely is!
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Sounds odd, but the tender/sweet of the carrot is a great foil for the chewy/bitter of the escarole. Scattering the escarole with a little sugar aids caramelization and adds to the sweet/bitter contrasts. Give this unlikely seeming combo a try and you may be hooked. Make this when the carrots are sweet.
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