Christmas Salad

OK, I only call it that because it's Green, Red, and White and had candy on it. It looked so perfect on our table tonight with our Mushroom Bourguignon, and it tasted even better. Now, I should probably put it out there at the beginning that the basis of this recipe is celery. Yup, celery. It was a winner, though, because not only was it delicious, but  I already had toasted hazelnuts on hand and so it came together in a snap. You could, of course, use any kind of nuts and it would still be delicious. I'm think walnuts or pecans would be amazing. If you're going to toast the nuts, start them first, and by the time they're finished, you're done with everything else.

Celery, Blue Cheese, and Cranberry Salad
adapted from Simply Recipes


INGREDIENTS
6 oz. blue cheese, crumbled
3/4 cup hazelnuts, roasted, skins removed, and coarsely chopped
1 Tbsp butter
3 Tbsp maple Syrup
Pinch of cayenne
Salt
1 1/2 bunches of celery (more or less, depending on the size of it)
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup olive oil
4 teaspoons lemon juice
Freshly ground black pepper

If you need to roast your hazelnuts, there are 30-second instructions here. If using other nuts, or not roasting, proceed.

Slice the celery stalks on the diagonal into 1/4-inch thick slices and lay them on a large serving platter. Sprinkle cranberries over the top, then crumbled blue cheese.

Melt butter in a small skillet. Add a pinch of cayenne and salt. Add the roasted hazelnuts to the pan and toast them on medium low heat for a few minutes, stirring continuously. When the hazelnuts are hot, turn off the heat and add maple syrup to the pan. Stir to coat the hazelnuts in the maple syrup. Let glazed nuts sit in the pan to cool, stirring every couple minutes to keep them loose as they cool.

In a small jar, mix together the olive oil and lemon juice. Add salt and pepper to taste. Shake to combine.

Toss nuts over the salad, and drizzle on dressing just before serving.

Radish Relish

Have you ever had spring time and too many radishes? Yeah, it's never happened to me before, either.

We actually ate all the lovely French breakfast radishes form our garden, but the Community garden we work has so many radishes that they've now either gone to seed or become so big that they're really just spicy potatoes. They also didn't get thinned, so they all worked their giant selves up into their air so they're vulnerable to bugs and drying and such. So, yesterday we picked about 10 pounds of radishes—that's the weight of the roots, not the leaves—and today I set to do something useful with them.

Enter Radish Relish. Now, I don't know how it will be after spending a few weeks/months in the cupboard, but today it's a little spicy, a little tangy, a little sweet, and would be excellent on a hamburger. Or roast beef. It's like pickle relish (well, duh . . .) but a little more exciting, to my mind, like a cross between relish and horseradish. When you come visit, I'll let you try it.

Radish Relish

makes 2-3 pints, but I made, um, SIX batches, so I have 8 quarts.

1 pound radishes

1/2 pound celery stalks

1/2 large sweet onion (about 1 cup)

1/2 jalapeño pepper, seeds and all

1 cup sugar

1 tablespoon mustard seed

2 teaspoons salt

1 1/2 teaspoons dill seed

White Vinegar to cover

Grate radishes, celery, onion, and jalapeño in your food processor, and mix them all together. Combine with remaining ingredients in a large pan, cover with vinegar (you may want to weigh down the vegetables to keep them from floating up) and let stand on the counter for 3 hours. After sitting time, bring to boil, and cook for 10 minutes. Ladle into jars and store in the refrigerator, or follow good health canning guidelines to preserve on the shelf.

Quick Cauliflower Puree

This was the show stopper of tonight's meal, despite its heavy competition of roast pork shoulder and roasted potatoes and sweet potatoes. It really couldn't have had better accompaniments, though, and I highly recommend this as a side to pork of any kind. It's rich and fruity, but not particularly sweet, although the apples meld beautifully with the cauliflower to yield an entirely new flavour.

Quick Cauliflower Puree

serves 4-5

1 Tbsp butter

pinch red pepper flakes, or to taste

1 head cauliflower, cored and cut into florets

2 apples, peeled, cored, and roughly chopped

3/4 cup water*

4 whole allspice, crushed or ground**

1/4 tsp coriander

2 oz cream cheese

salt and pepper to taste [I used white pepper to keep it smooth looking]

Melt butter in a large pot; add red pepper flakes and sauté for 1 minute. Add cauliflower and apple with 3/4 cup water or broth. Cover and simmer until tender, adding more water or broth if necessary (it wasn't necessary for me.) When vegetables are tender, mash them with a potato masher or food mill and add allspice, coriander, and cream cheese. Mash and stir together until creamy. Season with salt and pepper—I was surprised how much salt it wanted, but it was totally worth it—and serve.

*I suspect broth or apple juice/cider would make this even tastier, but I just used water. I'll use one of the others next time.

**You could always just use ground allspice, but I didn't measure it out, so you're on your own for that one. I'm guessing between 1/4 and 1/2 tsp, but let me know if you find a more exact measurement that works. I just crushed whole allspice in my mortar & pestle (thanks Justin & Jodi!)

Thanksgiving 2010

What a culinary success. This is the first time we've made a full traditional Thanksgiving for just our immediate family, and it was divine. We made some of this:

and some of this:

and a touch of that:

But want I want to share today is our appetizer salad:

A sweet potato mélange that will delight your your senses. Best of all, you serve it room temperature, so it's low pressure. Enjoy.

Sweet Potato Salad

serves 6-8 as a side or appetizer

4 large sweet potatoes, peeled and diced

olive oil

3 stalks celery, chopped

1 small shallot or 1/4 onion, finely chopped

1/2 cup dried currants, raisins, cranberries, or cherries (I had currants)

1/2 cup pecan halves, toasted then cooled and roughly chopped

4 oz goat cheese, crumbled (Feta would also work)

1/4 cup parsley, chopped

2 Tbsp smooth Dijon mustard

2 Tbsp red wine vinegar

salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 450˚F. Toss diced sweet potatoes with 2-3 Tbsp olive oil and roast until soft and starting to brown and caramelize, 25-35 minutes, stirring once. Remove from oven and cool. Combine celery, shallot or onion, dried fruit, pecans, goat cheese, parsley, mustard, and vinegar. Stir to combine. Combine with cooled sweet potatoes and season with salt and pepper. Serve as a salad at the table or on endive leaves or in small dishes as an appetizer while you're waiting for the turkey to cook. Yum.

Green tomatoes

So, our indeterminate tomatoes are still producing. Our grape tomatoes still have blossoms, and our beefsteaks are producing green tomatoes like nobody's business. The Roma and pear tomatoes are also still alive, but they aren't thriving like the others. Last week I made some fried green tomatoes, and you know what? I didn't really like them (next time I'll use more seasoning!) So, I set out to find a new way to use them. I made tri-color tomato sauce with pasta on Tuesday (that's just homemade tomato sauce with red, yellow, and green tomatoes) but yesterday I found a great way to prepare them: shred those bad boys. Maybe grate is a better description, but shred sounded kind of macho, didn't it? Oh yes.

It turns out that green tomatoes, because of their firmness, grate rather well. I used my food processor, but I suspect a large-hole cheese grater would work just fine. We served it with broiled tilapia that was, well, boring. That's how tilapia is, don't you think?

Green Tomato Pasta

4 servings

8 oz dried fettuccine

4 carrots, scrubbed

4 medium green tomatoes

2 Tbsp butter

4 cloves garlic, chopped

1 Tbsp tomato paste

optional: lemon zest, fresh oregano

salt and pepper

Put your water on to boil and shred your carrots and tomatoes. Heat butter over medium heat in a large skillet. When water is ready, pour in pasta, stirring to avoid starchy stickiness. Add garlic to butter, sauté until fragrant, about 1 minute, then add shredded vegetables. Cook and stir 2-3 minutes, then add tomato paste. Stir and reduce heat to avoid overcooking. When pasta is al dente, drain, reserving 1/2 cup cooking water, then add noodles and water to vegetables. Stir together, cook 1-2 minutes, and season to taste. I added about a 1/2 tsp of leftover lemon zest, some chopped oregano, and salt and pepper. Delicious and quick!

Zucchini+pizza=joy

We arrived home (again) to find our garden not only alive, but thriving and producing our first real harvest of the season. We did grab a few serranos before we left, but this harvest yielded two of those bigger-than-your-head zucchini that haunted our childhood nightmares and caused supper time theatrics that could have earned gastronomic Tony awards. Because we had been so very blessed by these olympian zucchini, I made the most of them for today's meal and dessert: Pizza and Zucchini bread. All that effort, and I still only managed to use one of them. What's on the menu for tomorrow? Um, zucchini, of course.

I rolled out some whole grain pizza crust dough that's been waiting in the freezer for a few weeks and spread it with a home made tomato sauce (onions+garlic+thyme sautéed until soft, add 1 Tbsp tomato paste, cook 1 minute, add 1 can tomatoes, cook, blend, season with salt and pepper, reduce. Tada!) I took the star of our meal (that was zucchini, remember?) and sautéed it with a cup of great northern beans and some chopped kalamata olives, spread that over the sauce, sprinkled on fresh sweet basil and topped with a thin layer of shredded (not grated) parmesan cheese. That was it.

I've recently come into my own in the pizza making department, and I thought I'd share my ultimate secret. It works for thick crust or thin, loaded or plain, meat or veggie. It's so simple you'll wish you'd been doing it forever. It does, however, require 2 bits of special equipment: Abaking stone and parchment paper. If you don't have those things, run out and get them now, and I'll wait until you get back.

Ready? Okay, here's how you make the greatest pizza even better. Put your stone in the oventhen preheat it to 450˚. Preheat the stone? Yes. 450˚? Oh baby, yes. Some even broil their pizzas, although I've not had great luck with it. Roll your dough out on the parchment and prepare it there instead of on the stone because, well, it's in the oven getting toasty warm. When your pizzas look too good to be true and your oven is plenty hot, slide the pizza, parchment and all, onto the preheated stone. How does one do this? For a not-overly-laden pizza I can generally just pick up the parchment and do it that way. For the monster sized one you may need to use a cutting board to slide it on and off. Notice that I'm completely discounting the use of an actual pizza peel. Who has one of these in their kitchen anyway? Well, we all should, but none of us do. Bake that puppy until the cheese is golden and bubbly and the crust is brown and crisp. I can cook two large pizzas in 7 minutes flat using this method and my handy dandy new convection oven.

Questions that may arise:

Q: Isn't that too hot to cook the inside of the pizza before burning the outside?

A: Nope. The preheated stone takes care of that and enables the crust to cook from the bottom while the topping cook from the top. It's how brick ovens work in pizza joints.

Q: Does this work for thick and thin crust both? It seems like it would only do thin ones.

A: It works for both, although a thick crust might take a (very) little longer. Instead of being pillowy and mushy, your thick crust will have a bottom crust that not only crunches pleasantly, but also holds your toppings with confidence.

Q: 7 minutes? 2 pizzas? That can't be right, can it?

A: OK, I cheated with my new convection oven and I really did cook two entire large size pizzas at the same time and both were done in 7 minutes. I've actually done it twice in the last four days and the results were the same (=amazing.)

Oh, and we served the pizza with fresh Rainier cherries. Hello, summer.

Sweet Potato Latkes

For our Hanukkah breakfast this morning (yes, yes, I know it's almost a week too late for that, but I'll be better next year. If we were Jewish I would be ashamed, but since we're not, I'm a little proud of myself for teaching the boys about it.) We read a story about the history and chatted a bit about the themes of bondage and liberation, faith, and light. It was delightful. Here's the recipe, and I know the latke purists will skewer me for what I've done, but they were a smashing success.

On a side note, I really need to get a better camera or a little food photo studio because my food photos make everything I love look disgusting and sickly. Alas, even technology can't fix them.

Sweet Potato Latkes

adapted from Deb at Smitten Kitchen

1 large sweet potato (1 pound), peeled

1 small onion (4 ounces), peeled

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 large egg, lightly beaten

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

Peanut oil, for frying

In a food processor or on a box grater, coarsely shred the potato and onion. For longer strands, lay the potato sideways in the chute of your food processor. The long strands were awesome, like Spaghetti in a bundle. If you were using normal potatoes, you'd need to drain the water from them by wrapping in a cheesecloth sling, and squeezing them, letting them stand for 2 minutes, then squeezing dry again. Sweet potatoes are much drier, and mine did not require the super squeeze method.

In a large bowl, whisk the flour, egg, salt and pepper together. Stir in the potato onion mixture until all pieces are evenly coated. I had to use my hands to get them thoroughly coated, and I still missed some; don't miss some.

In a medium skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil until shimmering. Drop packed teaspoons of the potato mixture into the skillet and flatten them with the back of a spoon. Cook the latkes over moderately high heat until the edges are golden, about 1 1/2 minutes; flip and cook until golden on the bottom, about 1 minute. Drain on paper towels. Repeat with the remaining potato mixture, adding more oil to the skillet as needed.

I didn't do this, but Deb makes this note for people who are smart, and I plan to be smarter at some point in my life. We'll see if that ever happens.

Do ahead: Latkes are a do-ahead-er’s dream. You can also keep latkes warm in the oven for an hour or more, if you’re waiting for stragglers to arrive. Cooked, they keep well in the fridge for a day or two, or in the freezer, well wrapped, for up to two weeks. Reheat them in a single layer on a cookie sheet in a 400 degree oven until they’re crisp again. Bonus: If you undercooked them a bit or didn’t get the browning on them you’d hoped for, you can compensate for this in the oven.