You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, Know when to walk away, Know when to run.
Kenny Rogers
I once was required to take a psychological test as part of an employment application. Maybe I was in my late thirties. While discussing the results with me, the male evaluator mentioned that I would keep hitting my head against the wall to get something done. “You just won’t give up,” he said, shaking his head.
I beamed with pride. “Got the job,” I thought to myself.
“That’s not a compliment,” he quickly added.
“What a jerk,” I thought to myself.
End of the Story: I got the job and succeeded. Head. Wall. Banging.
Crab-Avocado “Ravioli”
Admittedly, despite my success, he wasn’t all wrong. I understand the need to sometimes give up or give in. I’ve just never learned to do that well. This week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe choice, Crab-Avocado Ravioli, put me to the supreme test. I glanced at the recipe and then heard that my colleague, Diane, had already drawn blood. I folded. Readers, it was the fastest “fold” of my lifetime.
Amy Butler’s 2013 Galaxie Rosé
Crab-Avocado Ravioli is a deliciously divine crab salad mixed with lime zest/juice, minced shallots, cilantro and olive oil. I used Pasolivo’s California Blend olive oil and also added Penzey’s Sunny Paris seasoning. The avocado-part of the recipe is when it gets “twicky”. Dorie suggests slicing avocados on a mandoline without peeling or pitting them first.
(Memo to Ms. Greenspan: Now, Dorie, you know me well enough to realize this could just not happen in my kitchen.)
During our birding field trip this week, we watched a very noisy House Wren and a determined Tree Swallow duke it out over a excavated tree cavity nest originally chiseled out by a woodpecker!
Despite going rogue on this recipe, I enjoyed a lovely lunch of Crab Salad embellished with avocado and washed down with Amy Butler’s Ranchero Cellars 2013 Galaxie Rosé. The next day I turned the remaining salad into a mouth-watering Crab Roll, my picnic lunch during an all-day Audubon field trip. My blogging companions, Susan and John, can always turn leftovers into spectacular main entrées. See their magic, Crab Risotto with Artichoke Hearts, here.
Tomorrow, June 14th, is National Flag Day, a celebratory nod to our Stars and Stripes. The first official flag – the blue canton contained 13 stars – was approved by the Continental Congress on June 14, 1777. For the past 237 years it has stood (and, fallen) as a symbol of hope and glory and gratefulness throughout the world. Bravo to the Red, White and Blue and may we sometimes just remember and honor all that is right and good about this country.
French Fridays with Dorie is an international cooking group working its way through Dorie Greenspan’s Around my French Table. You can grab this week’s recipe from Liz, another Dorista. To see which flags my FFWD colleagues from around the world fly, go to our link here.
“If my friend Claudine Martina, a teacher from Angers, had given me this recipe years ago, my baking career would have ended — I would simply have found a way to use this recipe for just about everything.” Dorie Greenspan
Two wedges of Visitandine (a French cake) make the perfect base for strawberry shortcake (an all-American dessert).
This week’s French Friday’s with Dorie recipe choice is the heavenly dessert, Visitandine, named for the Order of Visitation, a French religious order founded in 1610. Like the cloistered, contemplative nuns it was named after, this spongy one-layer cake is plain, simple and sits quietly. Competing against a rich German-Chocolate Torte or a splashy Almond Sponge Roulade, it would probably lose. But if you are wise enough to return and taste again, you’ve won a friend forever.
I used an 8-inch springform pan to bake one thin Visitandine.
Although Dorie suggests doubling this recipe for more layers and versatility, I baked one thin cake in my 8” springform pan. Since I’m trying to be more creative with leftovers, wasting less food, this recipe leant itself perfectly to that challenge. (Thank you, thrifty Sisters.) I followed the recipe as written but did, at Dorie’s suggestion, brown the butter, turning it into beurre noisette. I definitely could taste the hints of caramel and hazelnut that beurre noisette represents. Here, in pictures, is my week of Visitandine, all different but delicious versions of one small white cake. Then, read on, there’s more leftover about leftovers.
Although Dorie instructed us to let it cool to room temperature, I could not wait. A warm piece of Visitandine is perfected goodness.
When my blogging colleagues Susan and John Lester were here recently, we maintained an on-going, onesubjectrunningintoanothersubject, conversation. About food and wine. About books and films. About careers. And, about my nemesis, leftovers and waste. Admittedly, I am a by-the-book, non-imaginative cook. I try hard but it’s very seldom that I crawl out on a foodie limb. Sprinkling Sriracha Sea Salt (Gracias, Ms. Puerto Rico) on french fries or Sale Ae Tartufo Estivo (Grazie, Grauers) on scrambled eggs are my go-wild moments.
Remember last week’s Blueberry & Cinnamon Swirl Sheep Milk Ice Cream? I piled two wedges together, than scooped the ice cream on top and finished up my box of blueberries.
To help my cause I coerced the Lesters into playing a game. I went to my fridge and took an inventory of leftovers – scallops, puff pastry and Petrale sole, left from our visit to my neighborhood Sea Chest restaurant. Susan also glanced at my fruit bowl (full) and vegetable bin (a good inventory). With those ingredients in mind they bounced menu ideas back and forth, one suggestion bringing on another. I laughed and listened. Just for this conversation alone, they’ve earned another invitation for next year. “Susan and John, come early, stay longer and, if the drought restrictions are lifted, I will even let you shower.”
By Day 5, the Visitandine was a little stale but still perfect for breakfast. After 20 seconds in the microwave, I split the last wedge in two and smothered it in Durkee’s Orange Marmalade topping it with Fage’s Greek Yogurt.
The true test in how I fared with Leftovers 101 is the result. I made a frittata with the Petrale Sole which I ate for breakfast and two lunches. Since they also left their fish leftovers from the Sea Chest with me, I made a Smoky Fish Chowder from a recent Melissa Clark “What’s for Dinner” column in The New York Times. (Not Pictured)
With the extra scallops from my FFWD Scallop and Onion Tartes Fines, I made scallops, bacon and asparagus spaghetti. I wish there had been more leftovers in this leftover.
How’d I do? A passing grade, maybe? Is it just me or will any of you confess to a leftover, waste or spoilage issue? I grew up in the era of the starving children in China. If there was food left on our plates, my brother and I were reminded of those poor kids. I still feel guilty, guilty, guilty about a wilted, spoiled or discarded anything. French Fridays with Dorie is an international cooking group working its way through Dorie Greenspan’s Around my French Table, more than 300 recipes from my home to yours. The recipe for Visitandine is here. To see how many layers my colleagues baked this week, check out our FFWD site.
This week’s French Fridays with Dorie choice is Scallop and Onion Tartes Fines. Like its brethren we’ve already made, Tomato-Cheese Tartlets andFresh Tuna, Mozzarella, and Basil Pizza, here’s another recipe where our intentions are not honorable. What Dufour and Pepperidge Farm have devoted years to perfecting, we take five minutes to flatten.
Start with a thawed sheet of puff pastry. After flouring your work area and rolling the pastry to a 13-inch square, take a 6-inch wide plate and, using a sharp knife, cut out four circles. Lay these on a parchment-lined baking sheet and prick with a fork. Lay more parchment on top and then plop another baking sheet over them. Sorta has a crushing affect on the unsuspecting pastry.
For the next fifteen minutes, while the pastry is baking and not puffing at 400 degrees, you mix together the caramel onion-bacon layer (my favorite part of this recipe). Divide this mixture among the four crusts and arrange scallops, sliced into thirds, over it. Drizzle olive oil over the top before seasoning with salt and pepper.
Dorie recommends baking these tarts at 400 degrees for 3 to 4 minutes. Being cautious, I baked mine longer which resulted in my pastry base becoming a tad too brown. In hindsight, I would have seared my scallops first. Still, tasty and unique as an appetizer or lunch (with a salad).
You might note that I suggested no wine choice for this menu. Last weekend I attended Vintage Paso: Zinfandeland Other Wild Wines, a 3-day touring blitz of our wine area. Readers, you know I’m a trooper, but after devoting one full day to this festival, I was done. That’s why you’re on your own for this week’s beverage.
The festival was educational, tasty and hilarious. My friends, John and Susan Lester, who live in southern Cali and blog at Create Amazing Meals joined me for the weekend. We’d known each other virtually for two years and met inreality last year. John is especially knowledgeable about wines, they visit this wine country frequently and were perfect companions and guests.Pictures and just a few words, tell our story best.
We’ve had our coffee. Susan and I, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, are ready to roll. Last week we plotted our zinful itinerary and plan to visit five wineries today.
Our first stop was Peachy Canyon Winery. This was supposed to be our fifth stop but, unfortunately, John missed a turn. Which meant that Susan and I both grabbed maps, assisted with directions all day and drove John, well, to drink!
Memo to my Colorado brother who is casually concerned about my wine adventures this winter: a Lester purchase.
Winery #2, Tablas Creek. With our tastings we enjoyed small bites, shrimp on sweet corn polenta cake and a beef slider on a sourdough crostini.
Winery #3, Halter Ranch, my favorite, where we had our wine and paella in the ranch’s original barn. Susan and I are at the tasting-less-and-eating-more stage.
Winery #4, Adelaida Cellars. It’s 82 degrees, I’ve had it. Susan and I sit at a picnic table while John happily disappears.
Winery #5, Opolo Vineyards. Whoopee. We head to the barbecue tent for roasted lamb, carne asada tacos, beans and all the fixings. We girls rally. Friends forever.
We assemble the wine on the dining room table and take the pledge, “What happens in Cambria, stays in Cambria.”
After dinner at my neighborhood Sea Chest restaurant, we settled in for an evening of Gin Rummy and a Port tutorial. Since I had never tasted Port, John bought me a bottle at Adelaida Cellars. A very smooth evening.
Paris-Brest, a delicate pastry dessert that was a splashy finish to my Chinese New Year celebratory dinner.
For anyone believing this holiday has come, gone and you missed it, I’m about to make your day. For more than five-thousand years the Chinese people have observed New Years their way. In the simplest of terms, it’s about the moon and our earth’s creatures. Once upon a time Buddha invited all the animals to join him for New Years. Twelve came to his party, resulting in a year being named to honor each one. This year, we’re observing the Horse.
Astrology doesn’t interest me. “What’s your sign?” is a question I can’t answer. I never read horoscopes. Every year a friend buys the current Chinese horoscope book and insists I read the chapter pertaining to me. I am a Monkey. For each of the last three years, the prognosis has been lousy. This year I flat-out refused to read it. “No, no, Mary, it’s good,” she promised. “You’re going to have a great year.”
I read. I saw. I’ll believe it after I live it.
Mussels and Chorizo with Pasta is a delicious and filling main course for any festive celebration.
Admittedly, Mary the Monkey is looking good for the next twelve months. On a scale of 1 to 12, I’d give myself a 9.3. Since Chinese New Year is a two-week affair, I still could honor that Horse, who is hopefully filled with good fortune, with a celebratory meal. I decided to make two recipes my French Friday colleagues had already made. I also baked blueberry-corn muffins and visited the winery-of-the-horse for vino. If the year ahead is as scrumptious as the dinner honoring it, I will be one merry monkey.
Blueberry-Corn Muffins added a touch of sweetness to the spicy seafood.
My entrée was Mussels and Chorizo with Pasta. You may think this dish was created by committee but it’s a Basquaise. With a nod to the simplicity of French Basque cuisine, these recipes often include tomatoes and sweet or hot red peppers. This dish includes both.
I bought my mussels at Piers 46 Seafood and already had a spicy pork link in the fridge. Since there’s a limit to the nod I want to give a Basquaise, I cut the diced fire-roasted tomatoes with green chiles by half. Fettuccine, with its slithery journey among the mussels, is the perfect pasta option. The sweetness of the blueberry-corn muffins provided just that tinge of sugar so needed with this spicy seafood dish.
It’s all about the horse, of course. I visited the Wild Horse Winery and picked a Pinot Noir.
If you’ll recall, last week’s FFWD recipe choice was a delicacy of caramelized almonds, pâte à choux and vanilla pastry cream. Knowing I didn’t have the proper equipment and pastry tips in my rental kitchen, I opted to save it until spring. Over the weekend, however, I experienced baker’s remorse. Each of my colleagues’ Paris-Brest write-ups were taste taunts to my stomach.
I used the heart pan to more easily pipe the Pâte à Choux into a shape.
Wasn’t the Year of the Horse worthy of a splashy dessert? Couldn’t this Monkey go the extra mile to cobble together the right stuff? Don’t Doristas always find a path? It took some scrambling but this week I put together my first Paris-Brest. Aside from its heart rather than round shape, I’m guessing it looked and tasted much like a novice’s Paris-Brest should.
Yum.
Here’s the recipe for the Mussels and Chorizo with Pasta. If you’re interested in the Paris-Brest recipe, here it is. If you’d like to see what my colleagues are making this week, go here. For the past three weeks I’ve been focused on Dorie’s recipes that this FFWD group made before I joined. I’ve completed my seafood and fish catch-up and next Friday I’ll be following our regular FFWD recipe schedule.
Happy New Year, readers. Horse or no horse, may we all find goodness and joy in the months ahead.
Scallops with Caramel-Orange Sauce and Spiced Butter-Glazed Carrots
This week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe choice is the dessert Paris-Brest, a celebratory creamy puff ring made from light pastry dough called pâte à choux. Already this sounds complicated, doesn’t it? It was created in 1891 to honor the Union Des Audax Français, an amateur bicycle race that is still peddling strong today.
Paris-Brest is a crowd-pleaser, promising to produce ou’s and ah’s from anyone who worships at the altar of caramelized almonds, vanilla pastry cream and Crème Anglaise. That’s why I decided to save this masterpiece to bake for my spandex-clad biking buddies when I return to Colorado this spring.
INSTEAD, TRY THIS MENU
Spiced Butter-Glazed Carrots. The carrots are dirty-fresh from Cambria’s Friday Farmers Market.
Instead I took advantage of the Central Coast’s largesse and made Savory Scallops with Caramel-Orange Sauce and Spiced Butter-Glazed Carrots. For me, it’s make-cup week. The recipes were made in 2011 before I joined FFWD. Dorie always delivers delicious. These two sweet/savory combos were a perfect light dinner to enjoy while watching the Grammy’s.
These little guys are fresh and tasty sea scallops.
The Caramel-Orange Sauce is a sweetheart of a compliment to the scallops.
When I visited Pier 46 Seafood to buy scallops, my fishmongerette, Amber, suggested small scallops rather than the large called for in this recipe. The prep and cooking time are the same. Here’s a tip. Dorie’s simplistic technique for the caramel sauce is one to commit to your memory bank. About those carrots? When you start with carrots just pulled from the earth, adding just a spice or two and chicken broth, there’s very little to say but thank you, Mother Nature.
I stopped by the Hearst Ranch Winery in nearby San Simeon to pick up wine for this menu. Ryan, who was working at the tasting bar, urged me to try their award-winning Three Sisters Cuvée red wine, a mixture of Grenache and Syrah grapes. It slide down easily.
ADAPTING TO ANY KITCHEN, STEP-by-STEP
If there is one question nagging at you after reading my three recent posts from Cambria, I suspect it would be, “How does that woman turn out this amazing food while working out of a rental kitchen?”
Here’s the answer, a how-to on cooking in strange spaces. My only criteria when renting a winter house in Cambria was that it be by the ocean and have a gas range. Because of a calendar snafu, my Realtors found me two houses by the ocean with gas ranges. One house for 5 weeks and the house I wanted for 8. If nothing else, I’m all about flexibility.
Traveling Tools: mandoline, electric grill, dutch oven, frittata pan, scales, Valentine molds, knives, juicer and. springform pan. Food Processor hidden from view..
While on-the-road most cooks know what equipment they must own, what they can live with and what, if necessary, can be purchased. This is what I packed: 1) ten cookbooks including Ottolenghi’s Plenty and Jerusalem, Madison’s Vegetable Literacy, Pereman’s Smitten Kitchen and CanalHouse Cooks Every Day; 2) Pensey’s spices; 3) my chef’s and paring knives; 4) equipment ranging from my food processor to a Wagner Magnalite cast aluminum pot; and 5) a 4-quart crockpot, acquired here.
Just as important as what I lugged from Colorado is what happened after my arrival. The house is lovely but the kitchen wasn’t feeling that love. Disarray is the word. First I scrubbed and scoured. Then I organized. I don’t mind grease and spills but I insist they be my grease and spills. After this thorough once-over and a trip to Trader Joe’s, my rental kitchen was ready-to-roll.
Having found ten cutting boards in my rental kitchen, I’m thinking of holding a garage sale.
What is insane about this particular kitchen is what’s here and what isn’t. There are 10 cutting boards. (I plead guilty to sometimes exaggerating so I snapped a photo. Count ’em.) It’s taken me three weeks to find potholders but during that hunt I counted 36 dishtowels. Although this is wine country, I only have two red wine glasses and six white, all with various logos. There is no paring knife but several huge plastic bowls (I’m thinking pretzels). Several pieces of the Crate & Barrel dinnerware are chipped or cracked. I’ve relegated them to the garage. I couldn’t set a table for six but since I’m not here to party, I don’t care.
As for the by the ocean requirement, I have no complaint!
These gorgeous strawberries are finally showing up at our local farmers markets.
If you would like to see the spectacular Paris-Brest created by my colleagues, go here. To find the recipes for scallops, Dorie’s caramel sauce and carrots, go here and here. French Fridays with Dorie is an international cooking group working its way through Dorie Greenspan’s “Around my French Table, more than 300 recipes from my home to yours.”
This week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe choice is Moules Marinière. It proved to be the perfect anchor to my celebratory feast after settling into my new California digs.
Moules Marinière
Living in the Colorado Rockies is a privilege, my idea of paradise. But it’s that 4-month window of snow, cold temps and icy footpaths that, well, leaves me cold. I learned to ski at Snowmass Mountain in the late ‘70s and buckled up my last boot in the late ‘90s when my knees began sassing back at me. This month, after two loopy falls on the ice, I escaped in search of a winter paradise. My first stop was Cambria, a drowsy, seaside village of 6,000 people located on the spectacular central coast and plopped among a native stand of Monterey pines.
It’s a good choice and here’s why. To my thinking, winter shows off Cambria at its finest. It’s off-season, that fleeting moment when locals reclaim their community. Think quiet, quaint and a well-kept secret. But here’s the thing, what surrounds this tiny town is just flat-out noisy in the friendliest of ways. Besides a number of migrating species, elephant seals, whales, birds and butterflies, there’s a castle to visit and an ocean to enjoy.
The end of the trail at Harmony Headlands and my favorite spot for a picnic lunch
Added perks are the vineyards, olive tree farms, goats (think chèvre) and farmers markets. These aren’t the vineyards of boxed wine and Two-Buck Chuck. In fact Wine Enthusiast magazine just named the surrounding Paso Robles area as the 2013 Wine Region of the Year. In all the World! More than 200 wineries here plant and pick over 40 wine grape varieties. It’s also reasonable to assume that marching in lock step with these wine producers is a food culture of innovative chefs offering seasonal, farm and ocean-to-table cuisine. For a food writer like me, I’ve landed in an edible feast of experiences.
This olive oil ranch is located in Paso Robles.
In a salute to where I landed, I made this week’s FFWD menu a true farm & ocean – to table meal. My two-pounds of mussels came from Pier 46 Seafood, my favorite fishmonger located in nearby Templeton. To make the mussels, I used Pasolivo Olive Oil made with olives grown on their Paso Robles ranch’s 45 acres of trees.
Emptying Sarah’s baguette basket at Hoppe’s Bakery. (Sarah has applied to Colorado University’s doctoral program in political science and is nervously waiting to hear from Boulder.) Note the time. It is 8:20 a.m.
The best baguettes on the central coast are made at Hoppe’s Bakery in picturesque Cayugos, a 15-mile trip and soooooo worth the 20-minute drive. If you stop by at 8am, the baguettes will be warm, the coffee, piping hot, and the almond croissants……… well, you know. I bought out Sarah’s basket and delivered two of those beauties, wonderfully warm, to my Realtors, Heidi and Janet. Since those two ladies were already having a prickly morning, the baguettes were welcomed.
Pour moi. An almond croissant. And, yes, I hung out at Hoppe’s, chatted with Sarah and ate the whole thing.
For wine, I turned to my favorite vineyard at historic Halter Ranch, and chose, at their suggestion, a fruity-tasting Sauvignon Blanc. Besides pouring superb wine, I am partial to Halter Ranch wines because of its owner, Hansjörg Wyss, a Swiss-born, billionaire businessman who donates generously to various conservation efforts in the Rockies. He also walks the walk at the 960-acre Ranch with its state-of-the art and environmentally-sensitive winery.
Halter Ranch’s state-of-the-art winery. Photo by Halter Ranch
There is no downside to this meal. Chop an onion, 2 shallots and 4 garlic cloves and throw into a Dutch oven filled with a tablespoon or two of olive oil. Toss some salt and pepper into the pot and soften the mixture for 3-5 minutes until it glistens. Pour in a cup of dry white wine with a chicken bouillon cube, springs of thyme, parsley, bay leaf, and lemon zest strips. In another 3 minutes add 2 pounds of mussels. After bringing this to a boil, cover the pot and steam for another 3 minutes or so, until the mussels are opened. Serve immediately with a hot baguette and toasty french fries (mine are from the local Trader Joe’s.)
Two pounds of mussels, scrubbed, debearded and ready to steam.
A tip or two. I cranked up the broth’s flavoring by doubling Dorie’s suggested ingredients portions. What I used for my 2 pounds of mussels, she used for 4 pounds. Also, try this when eating Moules Marinère. Break the shell at its hinge and use one half as a scoop to detach the mussel and spoon it in your mouth. Really, no utensils are needed. As Dorie mentions, “You’re talking about an elbows-on-the-table meal and messy fingers.”
To see how these mussels opened for my colleagues, go to our group link here. For this week’s recipe, go here. French Friday’s with Dorie is an international cooking group working its way through Dorie Greenspan’s “Around my French Table, more than 300 recipes from my home to yours.”
