This sauce was designed around a wine from Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard’s second label Quinta Cruz. This is a label that produces only wines from Portugal and Spain. The wine is Graciano, and is a wine that is savory first, then fruity. To me, the flavor profile is oil cured olives, oregano and marjoram, then a shovelful of really good farm dirt, finishing with blueberries. Now, this is my opinion but I am sticking with it. If you cannot find a wine from these grapes I suggest using a petite sirah.
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The sauce for this dish easily works with pork or even beef, but is especially good with all poultry. Duck has a reputation of being difficult-from greasy to rubbery to gamy to hard to cook. It really isn’t that hard to deal with as long as you don’t try to cook the duck whole. The breasts are easily done in a sauté pan that is transferred to the oven to finish. Legs should be cooked separately, either roasted, braised, or confited (slow cooked in their own fat). Depending on who you talk to, duck fat is considered to be between butter and olive oil as far as health benefits go. I recommend you look it up yourselves if you are curious. I will say it washes off hands a lot easier than any vegetable shortening I’ve ever used, and it tastes great. So, while cooking this recipe, have a little heat-proof container to put the fat you drain off into handy. Look for moulard or Pekin duck breasts for this recipe. These breasts are larger and ½ a full breast (1 side) will feed two.
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This dressing is pack with herb flavors. Although it was made to go with a fava and lettuce salad, it would be great as a dip for vegetables or falafel, and would be good in chicken salad or with skewers of grilled chicken, lamb, or beef. Avoid using curly parsley here as it will make it taste bitter and vegetable.
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This is a brightly flavored treatment for meaty swordfish. The radishes are a great foil for the buttery sauce and sweet tasting fish. Untoasted coriander seed has a citrusy profile that matches well with the sauce. If you wanted to, you could lightly cook the radishes in the sauce to give them a softer flavor, but the soaked raw slices provide a nice crunch as well as a little heat for contrast.
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A very basic “creamy” dressing for when you want a little sweetness, but still want the vegetables to shine through. This was first made for a Rainbow Carrot Slaw.
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This can be used as a sauce or a glaze, depending on far you choose to reduce it. Leaving it wet and slightly chunky yields a nice quick sauce for most major proteins, pastas, and summer squash. Pureed and strained is excellent for things like broiled salmon, pork chops, or a sauté of corn and peppers. Cook down the pureé for a glaze for things like this dish. Depending on how intense or thick you like it, thin with a little water or pasta cooking water. Cooked down enough you can use it as a syrup for something dessert-y.
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Grilling a lemon just adds a certain je ne sais quoi to lemons where juice is going to be used. There is a certain smoky char that is faint but there, and the juice seems sweeter. This dressing was made for a salad with grilled zucchini and tomatoes and mint, so the bit of sweetness acts as a foil to the acid in the tomatoes and the slight bitterness of the squash.
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Not a true jam, but one of a series of “jams” made from various vegetables that are used as toppings, sauce enhancers, dips, or spreads for sandwiches.
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Use this dressing where you might use a Louie (1000 Island type) dressing, or with seafood. This recipe was designed to go with the Romaine Salad with Seafood and Shellfish Dressing, which includes instructions for saving the liquid from draining tomatoes. If you are using tomatoes, and have the liquid from them as they drain, great! Use it for flavor and color. If not, don’t worry about it.
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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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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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A classic dressing for Frisee au Lardons (Curly Endive with Bacon and Poached Egg), a bistro classic. Here the dressing is lightened up a bit using more oil than bacon fat. This dressing is also good on spinach, especially if warmed up a little bit.
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Pink shrimp look beautiful next to pale green fava beans in this recipe adapted from Elizabeth Schneider’s Uncommon Fruits and Vegetables
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