SENSORI

Cobb Salad Hosts the Final Summer Tomatoes

Swept up by the trend to grow our own food, I planted my first vegetable garden this year late in the spring season.  I had very low yield but the flavor and texture of the fruit that the garden bore was excellent.  I harvested Asian eggplant (a few of which were stuffed and others were factored into mixed grills or curries), jalapeno peppers, hungarian peppers and tomatoes.  The tomatoes, along with the jalapeno peppers, helped to make mouth-watering salsa.  And on hot summer afternoons, the tomatoes made the perfect lunch sliced, placed on white bread or a lightly toasted pita with a drizzle of olive oil and salt and pepper.  Yum!

I pulled the last three Celebrity tomatoes off the vine a few days ago (pictured left are slices from one of the tomatoes) and used them in a deconstructed cobb salad (pictured above).  My version of this salad is a tribute to the deconstructed cobb on the menu of DC Coast, a restaurant in Washington, D.C. known as a go-to  power meal spot for the tasseled Gucci-loafered lobbyists in town.  A detailed history of the Cobb salad (which dates back to 1930s Hollywood), including its original ingredients, can be found on Wikipedia.  I haven't dined at DC Coast for a while, so I prepared my salad from a foggy recollection and gut instinct.  The preparation of the ingredients is so simple that I'm not addressing preparation steps.  Appearing left to right on the salad plate pictured at the top of this page are the following ingredients:

•     crumbled blue cheese
•     diced tomatoes
•     chopped spinach
•     chopped bacon
•     diced cucumber
•     chopped grilled chicken (or you can use chopped chicken from roaster leftovers)
  
•     chopped egg

And across the top of the plate is diced, ripened avocado.  The dressing I used for this salad is a honey mustard and grapefruit champagne vinaigrette that is spicy and bright and a delicious contrast to the rich ingredients of the salad.  The ingredients for the dressing are:

• 1/3 cup of Honeycup Uniquely Sharp Mustard
• 1/4 cup of mayonnaise
• 1/2 teaspoon of white, refined sugar
  
• 1/2 tablespoon of vegetable oil
• 1/2 tablespoon of finely minced fresh garlic
  
• 1/8 cup of champagne
• 1/8 cup of freshly squeezed grapefruit juice
  
• Pinch of dry oregano
• Salt and pepper to taste

NOTE: the Honeycup brand of mustard is central to this dressing.  No other honey mustard will do.  Add all the ingredients to a mixing bowl and whisk until fully combined and the dressing is emulsified.  If you don't have champagne at the ready, a splash of dry white wine is a good substitute.  You also may add a little water to the dressing to tone down the flavor or thin out the consistency or you may add sparkling water if you'd like the effervescence of champagne but don't have any handy.  Remember, the key to improvising is tasting your product along the way.  Whisk the dressing after every adjustment, dab a drop of dressing on your forefinger and taste to determine whether you are satisfied or more adjustments are needed.  If you can't pluck the last of this season's tomatoes fresh from your garden for this salad, consider buying from your local farmers market.  But, hurry -- grab them while supplies last!

Pasta Salad Sits Pretty Aside a Juicy Grilled Burger

Grilling outside this past week has been a treat.  We didn’t have to run inside to warm up after turning over the food.  In fact, we had to find some shade to avoid the sun!  We grilled hamburgers and they turned out thick, juicy and yummy (see photo right; doesn’t that burger look dee-lish?!?).  It’s a given that my husband Baxter will have french fries with his hamburgers.  He loves fries and is lean with a super high metabolism so he can eat whatever he wants without consequence.  Under the guise of eating something healthier than french fries, I made a pasta salad for myself.  And yes, Baxter ended up eating my pasta salad, too.

Friends, don’t buy store-bought pasta salad or make it from a boxed pasta salad kit.  Most store-bought options contain overdone pasta and soggy vegetables that are swimming in oil.  The boxed kits are overpriced and contained spice packages that are loaded with sodium and other additives that don’t contribute much to flavor.  With a few fresh ingredients and a creative flair for adding things like cheese, you can easily make a pasta salad at home that suits your tastes, looks gourmet and screams “I’m fresh!”   Start with a pasta shape that makes you smile!  For the pasta salad pictured above, I used fusilli or corkscrew pasta, but you can use farfalle/bowtie, shell, elbow shaped pasta or even cut spaghetti.  Just remember **don’t overcook the pasta.**  Cook your pasta al dente or it just won’t taste good.

Choose some fresh vegetables and herbs for your salad.  For the pictured salad, I used a combination of diced tomatoes, cucumber and green bell pepper and chopped parsley.  I seeded the cucumber and tomatoes to avoid adding too much water to the salad.  You can find a great, quick how-to YouTube video on seeding a tomato posted by the Chatelaine Test Kitchens if you need a few seeding tips.  Instead of fresh tomatoes, try grilled or sun-dried tomatoes.  You also can try a variation of grilled, steamed or blanched asparagus tips, roasted eggplant cubes, steamed broccoli or cauliflower, chopped carrots, mushrooms . . . the possible vegetable variations are endless.  Let your imagination and palate lead you.   Lightly dress your salad with olive oil and a little vinegar if you choose.  Or you can use lemon juice or the juice of any citrus fruit instead.  Add salt and pepper to taste, and you might try adding dry Italian or Mediterranean herbs.  Then top your salad off with some cheese.  I used grated parmigiano-reggiano on the salad pictured above.  Other options are mozarella, feta and chevre.  Be creative and choose a cheese that pairs well with the other ingredients you’ve selected for your masterpiece!  Toss your salad ingredients gently before serving, then dig in and enjoy.

Cranberry white chocolate chip cookies: can you say "crackberry" cookies?

My friend Alisa recently won the top prize for cookies in a bake-off with her cranberry white chocolate chip cookies.  It was exciting news.  The competition benefited a public elementary school in Washington, D.C., so the bakers were doing good works to support their community, and Alisa got to shine a light on her baking skills (skills I didn't know she had).

I am not a white chocolate fan but I do like cranberries so I was intrigued.  Alisa shared her winning cookie recipe with me and I didn't waste time baking up a batch (see photo above).  These cookies are da' bomb!  No kidding.  Taste one cookie and it's easy understand why Alisa took first prize.  The tart and texture of the cranberries are perfectly complemented by the creamy smoothness of the white chocolate chips.  I added chopped walnuts to my batch, and they provided a delightful touch of salt and savory.

Over the past decade or so, cranberries have increased in popularity.  Cranberries are a uniquely American fruit, and dried cranberries appear more and more in recipes for salads, entrees and baked goods.  Perhaps this is due in some part to the mass-appeal and availability of Ocean Spray's dried, sweetened cranberries called Craisins.  Even the Girl Scouts have caught on: their newest cookie is Thank U Berry Much, which is a cranberry cookie (pictured right).  No offense to the Girl Scouts and their cookies -- I've tried a few Thank U Berry Much cookies.  They can't compare to Alisa's Cranberry White Chocolate Chip Cookies.  So, here's the recipe, slightly modified by me.  Give it a try and please let me know how you like them.  But here's a WARNING: You can't stop eating these cookies once you start!  They are deliciously "crack-ish."

Cranberry White Chocolate Chip Cookies

- 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour    - 1 tsp. baking soda

- 1 tsp. salt                                - 2 sticks butter, softened

- 3/4 cup granulated sugar        - 3/4 cup brown sugar

- 1 tsp vanilla extract                - 2 eggs

- 2 cups white chocolate chips   - 1 cup of chopped walnuts

- 1 cup of dried cranberries (Craisins are recommended)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Combine flour, baking soda and salt in a small bowl.  Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla together in another bowl.  Add eggs one at a time, beating well after adding each.  Gradually beat in flour mixture.  Stir in chips, cranberries & walnuts.  Drop rounded teaspoon-fulls onto an ungreased cookie sheet and cook for 9-11 minutes. Cool on baking sheet for 2 minutes before removing.

Alisa in her kitchen.

Olive Tapenade: A Twist on Final Four Noshing

I love this time of year.  Yes, it’s the Lenten season.  And yes, crocuses are sprouting out of the ground, a sign that spring is on our heels.  But what my heart beats for is:  March Madness! Yes, indeedy.  Tradition will hold and I will be glued (G-L-U-E-D, you hear me?!) to the television coverage of the 2010 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.  If you’re looking for bracket analysis, go to ESPN.com.  What I have to offer is an alternative or an addition to the usual tournament-watching chow of wings, chips and cheesy, creamy dips.  It’s olive tapenade.

Since moving to Norfolk, I’ve searched for a fresh, ready-made tapenade at my local supermarkets and found nothing.  So, I’ve been making this recipe at home, which I adapted from a recipe I found at the blog site, The Rogue Gourmet.  This tapenade is a delicious alternative to high fat dips typically served for noshing while watching sporting events.  The rich and salty olives layer nicely against the smooth taste of roasted eggplant and red peppers and pureed chick peas.  Make adjustments to the recipe if you are staying away from salt (you can decrease the amount of olives) or if you don’t like fresh garlic (you can skip it all together or use a little powered garlic instead).  It’s mighty tasty served with hot bread (the photo above shows the tapenade served with bread sticks I made) or something crispy like Stacy's Simply Naked Pita Chips.  The tapenade recipe follows.  Serve it up however you like.  You won’t be disappointed.  And catch some of exciting college hoops games over the next few weeks!  They won’t disappoint either.

Green Olive Tapenade

Ingredients:

• 1 large eggplant
• 1 16 oz. can of chick peas (garbanzo beans) in water, drained
• 1 24 oz. jar of green olives with pimentos, drained
• 1 red pepper, roasted and seeded (or 1/2 cup of canned roasted red pepper strips)
• 1/4 bunch of flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled
• 1 cup of extra virgin olive oil
• fresh ground pepper to taste
  

Directions:

1. Split eggplant in half, season with olive oil, salt and pepper and roast in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes.  When cooled, remove pulp and discard skin.
2. Take remaining ingredients, except the olive oil and black pepper, and make sure they are well drained.  Place these ingredients in a food processor in batches and pulse until well chopped.
3. Slowly drizzle olive oil into ground mixture while stirring the tapenande until the oil is incorporated.
4. Season to taste with fresh ground black pepper.
5. Nosh away!

Pre-made roux: great taste, less headache!

Gumbo: if you've had the authentic Louisiana version then you know that many people and eating establishments say the make it, but very few get it right.  Since marrying into a Louisiana family, I've begun cooking some traditional cajun/creole foods including the iconic gumbo.  Initially, gumbo was a deliciously mysterious dish to me.  I had never before had anything like the smoky, rich broth (or "juice" as it is referred to by my Louisiana family and friends) of a gumbo.  The secret to this broth is the gumbo roux.  A roux is a staple of traditional French cooking and is made of flour and a fattening agent, typically butter, that is slow cooked to reach the right consistency.  A lighter colored roux forms the basis for classical sauces like a bechamel.  Vegetable oil typically is substituted for butter in a darker and longer cooked roux, like a gumbo roux.  For the first few months of my marriage, I shook in my boots as my aunties-in-law regaled me with stories of standing over a stove for hours to cook a homemade roux, how some roux was thrown away after hours of cooking for being slightly off, and how delicate the balance was between fat and flour in a good roux.  And then my sweet mother-in-law took the fear out of cooking gumbo for me by letting me in on a great secret: you can buy pre-made roux in most Lousiana grocery stores.  And then harps rang out and cherubs flew over my head.  We usually stock up on gumbo roux when we go to Louisiana to visit family but if you live outside the region, you can buy it on-line.  The two ready-made rouxs I've used are Savoie and Kary's.  I intend on cooking a homemade roux soon, but the stuff in a jar is a satisfying place holder while I build up my nerve.  An equally important gumbo ingredient that is sold in retail outlets in limited geographic areas is gumbo sausage. In a future post, I'll discuss sausages for gumbo, provide an easy-to-follow gumbo recipe and address another special gumbo ingredient - gumbo filet.  Until then, laissez les bon temps roulez!

An Imprecise Cook's Cold Weather Menu

This past week, Norfolk was blanketed with six to eight inches of snow, which is a lot snow for a town this far south on the Atlantic coast.  I worked up an appetite shoveling the driveway and trudging through the snow on a walk with my dog.

  

The view from our street and my pup romping in the snow.

The weather and my hunger were the perfect prompt for making a pot of steaming hot soup.  So, I prepared pasta e fagioli (in Italian, “pasta and bean”) soup and served it with a gooey, grilled cheese sandwich.  I didn’t follow a recipe for the soup.  I just gathered, chopped and threw in ingredients.  Here’s an approximation of what I used:

• 1 pound of browned, ground Italian sausage
• 1 16 oz can of diced tomatoes
• 1 can of tomato paste
• 1 clove of garlic, minced
• 2 cups of chicken broth
• 1 cup of water
• 1 lemon, juiced
• 2 carrots, diced
• 4 small to medium-sized white potatoes, diced
• 1 16 oz can of dark red kidney beans
• 1 lb of kale, cleaned and chopped
• 1 cup of orzo pasta

Brown the sausage in your stockpot.  Add the cup of water and scrape off the sausage reduction on the bottom the pot.  Throw in all the other ingredients, save for the pasta.  Simmer until all the ingredients are cooked and tender (about 20-25 minutes).  Add the orzo and extra water if needed to thin out the broth (remember: the pasta will soak up a lot of your liquid).  If you'd like a pasta e fagioli recipe with accurate ingredient measurements and preparation instructions, try Giada De Laurentis' recipe or this traditional vegetarian recipe that calls for ditalini pasta.

 

I used a half-slice each of muenster and cheddar cheese for the grilled cheese sandwich.  The combination of the buttery, soft muenster and sharp cheddar cheeses was perfect.  When grilling a cheese sandwich, cover your pan with a lid so the internal heat will melt the cheese, but remove the lid soon after the cheese begins to melt to prevent your bread from getting soggy.  Mmm mmm good!

Bourdain Inspires Kitchen Clambake

Anthony Bourdain inspired me.  I am sure that hundreds, thousands, perhaps millions of people have drawn inspiration from the work of the noted chef, author and host of the show "Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations" airing on the Travel Channel.  During the show, the irreverent Bourdain travels the globe searching for the most sensational eating experiences – smoking, cursing and drinking along the way.

I watched the new episode filmed in Brittany, which premiered Monday, January 25^th (and will re-air regularly, of course – it’s cable television!).  Shot in HD, the episode showcased the breath-taking natural beauty, ancient history and scrumptious cuisine of that region of France.  The James Beard Foundation award-wining Bourdain examines the confluence of cultures and the region’s proximity to the sea that have influenced its traditional foods – the incomparable salted butter, the “far” (a food Bourdain describes as similar to Yorkshire pudding), the charcuterie, the fresh bread and patisseries, the buckwheat crepes and the fresh seafood.  My mouth watered.

The episode concluded with Bourdain consuming what appeared to be six-pounds of steamed fresh seafood.  “For me, what it’s all about is a big, heaping, *bleeping* tower of shellfish.  Just shellfish.  You just sit there and you pig out.  I mean . . . it’s what you do in these parts.  And I’ve been looking forward to this something fierce!” Bourdain crows in anticipation of his feast.

Well, he got himself a big, *bleeping* tower of shellfish indeed!  A clip from the show reveals just how big.  With an open bottle of wine in front of him, Bourdain plows through the plate of lobster, flat-shelled oysters (unique to the region), mussels, langoustines, local crab and shrimp -- mopping the shellfish meat in drawn butter, and leaving only a few pieces uneaten.  Yummmm.

Not able to resist the enticement of Bourdain’s shellfish throw-down, I decided that my husband and I were going to have a shellfish dinner last night.  I’ve prepared lobsters in my kitchen, but I wanted to serve a variety of shellfish.  And I’ve cooked and enjoyed clambakes in the outdoors during the waning days of summer on Martha’s Vineyard but it’s the middle of winter in Norfolk and outdoor cooking was not in the cards.  I had not previously cooked a clambake on my stove top.  And that was what I set out to do.

I turned to another television chef for guidance and loosely followed an Ina Garten recipe for a kitchen clam bake.  Fortunately, my local Farm Fresh super market had all the ingredients  and I was able to collect everything in one stop.  The preparation was fun and easy with the exception of scrubbing clean the clams and giving them repeated brine baths.  Here are some photos of the prep and the final product:

 

 Littleneck clams soaking in brine.

Leeks and onions sauteed in butter (or but-tah).

On top of the sauteed leeks and onions, I layered small red bliss potatoes and smoked kielbasa sausage, sprinkled chopped garlic, salt and pepper, and ringed the pot with sprigs of fresh thyme.

On top of the sausage, I layered clams, shrimp and a 1.75 pound lobster.  I poured into the pot 2 cups of wine and 1/4 cup of olive oil, put the top on the pot and cooked under medium high heat for 30 minutes.

 
I served hot french bread with the meal for sopping up the buttery seafood broth.

After the meal was plated and served, Baxter and I dug in.  I used a 2008 Sterling Vineyards Vintner's Collection Sauvignon Blanc for the base of the seafood broth, and we drank the wine with the meal as well.  Baxter said the wine held up nicely next to the seafood, and I agree.  The meal was delicious.  We didn’t have the Bay of Biscay or the English Channel over our shoulders but the comfort of our home was pleasing.  Hopefully, we’ll have a chance to explore Brittany and its food very soon.  Thanks to Bourdain, we’ve added a new destination on our list of places to visit.