Pasta e Fagioli

The other day, I had the chance to sit in one of my favorite lunch places and reminisce  about a bowl of Pasta e Fagioli.  Sipping on a hot, fresh cup of coffee, the question that was pressing for me was; “What’s the soup of the Day?”  When the returned answer was Pasta e Fagioli, my menu choice was made.  I smiled, asked for crusty bread to accompany the soup and settled in to recall my first trip down Zuppa lane.

A few years into my experience of teaching cooking classes, I looked at every opportunity to partner with other small businesses to bring a new concept to our collective publics.  Working at the Farmers’ Market in St. Matthews, my next booth neighbor was Justin Gilbert of the locally famous Gelato Gilberto.  We talked about his experiences in Italy and before you know it, we’d agreed to partner in offering a few Italian Cooking Classes in his home.

Justin’s home just wasn’t any home, but a three story, cozy condo in Norton Commons.  Above his Gelato Gilberto business, his family enjoyed their perch above the little village in Prospect.  We tried a few classes in his shop and a few in his and his family’s cucina at the top of the stairs.

It was up those winding stairs that the magic of food and friendship took place.  We began the evening with some antipasti, the details, I don’t remember.  What sticks in my mind and what I thought quietly about that day last week in Blue Dog Bakery and Cafe was the Panzanella Salad, the Pasta d Fagioli and the Gelato.

Patricia Wells, one of my favorite cookbook authors says: ‘there are about as many versions of pasta and bean soup as there are cooks…varies from a broth-like bean soup to a creamy bean puree…’  The one I had at Blue Dog, and the one that I make (although different) are of the brothy variety.  Tonight, we are sharing my version, along with a homemade loaf of bread and, I am sure a few glasses of vino.

Pasta e Fagioli

• 2-3 oz. of finely diced Pancetta
• 1 large onion, finely diced
• 2-3 ribs celery, diced
• 1/2 cup or more diced carrot
• 2 Tbls olive oil
• salt and pepper
• pinch crushed red pepper
• 1 bay leaf
• 6 cups vegetable or chicken stock
• 1 cup, or more diced tomatoes
• 1 cup uncooked pasta, or two cups cooked pasta
• 3 cups cannelini beans, undrained – if canned*

Begin by preparing the diced vegetables.  Drizzle the olive oil into a stock pot.  Add the onion and Pancetta and begin to saute.  Once the onion has softened, add the celery and carrot and cook until the onion is translucent and the celery and carrot have begun to soften up a bit.  Season with salt and pepper and add the pinch of crushed red pepper and bay leaf.  Add the stock and tomatoes.  Bring to a simmer.  Add the pasta and cook until al dente.  add the cooked beans.

Heat the soup until completely hot and the pasta the perfect consistency.

For, me, I love a sprinkling of fresh Parmigiano cheese, fresh grated black pepper and some basil chiffonade.

*It’s easy to cook beans from their dried state, but they do take a bit of a watchful eye and time.  See my blog post about cooking beans, January 12, 2009.

Enjoy!

National Cookie Month

I sometimes imagine that I have the power to make big things happen. It routinely gets me into trouble. At home. At work. But in my little corner of the world, and if I had the power, I would make January National Cookie Month. It might seem odd that I would chose January. After all, December is most likely the month that most cookies are baked. Holiday cookies. Take a look around and see all the magazines that are produced for December distribution. Cooking Shows and Cookie Exchanges, all in December.

December is way too busy a month for me to bake all the cookies that I desire. Many times, I do bake dozens! In some memorable years, I’ve been know to bake hundreds of dozens. The problem is, of course, that I don’t have time to eat them. They are usually given away or devoured by others anyway. January is my time to bake and eat cookies.

This January, I have a new favorite cookie to share. It’s been on my mind since I found the recipe in a special publication called Food Gifts. Sorry to tell you that you probably won’t be able to find the magazine any longer on the book shelves. It’s display date ended on December 10th. But, I am sharing the delicious recipe (well, my rendition) with you, and will keep you alerted to other inspirations of the print variety.

The name of the recipe ‘Toffee-Pecan Chippers in a Jar’ drew me in right away. The picture of the layered cookie mix was cutely staged. I built the jarred cookie mix in a class in early December, but didn’t actually mix the cookies up until Christmas Eve, when my schedule for dessert baking was evaporating and I was getting desperate. Since Christmas Eve, I’ve baked these cookies three times. They are that good.

You might be able to imagine that I didn’t make the recipe exactly as prescribed. The changes I made relate to my desire to put coconut oil in lots of different baked goods (see my post on My Morning Muffin). Coconut oil gives wonderful texture to muffins, cookies and even cakes. I generally substitue about 1/2 of the butter or oil in a recipe for coconut oil. I no longer use Crisco shortning in pie crusts, substituting half butter and half coconut oil. The results are delectable.

Toffee-Pecan Chippers

2 Tbls butter
1/4 cup coconut oil
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/3 cups White Whole Wheat Flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup Heath Bar crumbles
1/3 cup coconut
1/3 cup chopped nuts or sunflower seeds

Directions:

Cream together the fats and sugars.  Add the egg and vanilla and mix until smooth.  Add the remaining ingredients and stir in with a wooden spoon.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Scoop the cookies into mounds onto a parchment lined baking sheet.  Use your fingers to press the mounds into flattened discs. (This helps the cookies bake more uniformly.)

Bake for 5 minutes, then spin the cookie sheets around (left to right).  Bake for another 3-5 minutes.  Baking time relates to the individual oven, so be prepared to watch the cookies closely.  You’ll see the cookies puff and dry slightly on top and become golden brown on the edges next to the pan.

Remove the cookies from the oven and allow to cool completely on the pan.  This gives the cookie a chance to continue to crisp up on the outside, yet stay chewy on the inside.  That, my friend, is a description of the perfect cookie!

If you’re baking all the cookies at once, you’ll most likely need two baking sheets.  I like to give my cookies aboout 2″ between each one so that they bake evenly and crisp up nicely.

Enjoy!

It’s Hard to Eat 13 Servings of Fruits and Veggies…

… If you don’t start with Breakfast!

Every week since the first of the year, I am finding new inspiration to ‘eat my veggies’.  Most recently, a youtube video by a doctor whose MS was reversed by completely changing her food plan.  The key, Dr. Terry Wahls says is to eat three huge platefuls of leafy greens per day.  Kale is touted as being the most nutritious green helping us to make these cellular changes.  Take a few minutes and watch this video – you won’t regret it.

Back to Breakfast.  My first inkling that eating something green for breakfast was during my days at Breadworks.  We made wonderful salads with a great mix of field greens, brightly colored peppers, onions and seeds.  Topped with a conservative amount of cheddar cheese and drizzled with a bit of balsamic vinaigrette, it was tasty.  Crunchy, sweet, savory, acidic and satisfying.  But, I have to admit that I was pretty surprised that one of my regular customers was eating it for breakfast!  Once she explained, I thought: “why not?”

Years have past, but I still try to take a routine stab at adding veggies to breakfast.  Sure, it’s easy to add left over vegetables to an omelet, but more recently, I’ve gone a different route. With a selection of veggies and greens almost always in the fridge, I’ve decided to broaden the experiment.  I was never one to really ‘love’ breakfast food, unless of course, if I can ‘love’ my chocolate chip cookies with my morning coffee.  So why not cook foods that we think of as lunch and dinner foods for breakfast?

I’ll not give up on the breakfast salad that I introduced at Breadworks, but lots of times, I want a warm, filling plate in the morning.  So, here are a few of my new favorite things:

Steamed Kale with leftover potatoes, sauteed with a bit of olive oil and red onion

Roasted peppers, tomatoes and eggplant over a steaming mound of polenta

Stir fried rice with egg and minced peppers, mushrooms, green onion and jalapeno

Arugula, with a simple dressing made from red wine vinegar and olive oil, with pistachios thrown on for protein.  Adding a piece of whole grain toast with a bit of shaved Parmesan will let you think you might just be in Tuscany for Breakfast.

Visit a previous post of mine: ‘Stir Fried Rice Makes Good Use of Leftovers’ for the details of making the fried rice. For Breakfast, I usually streamline the process by just doing the egg, some veggies and a little sesame oil.

Enjoy!

Mark’s Favorite Onion Rings

Yep, they tell me they are still talking about the onion rings.  Introduced to Mark and ‘the redhead’ about 5 years ago, these onion rings are a staple in our celebratory repertoire.  If there is a special event where Mark is the focus, you can be sure that I’ll be in charge of the onion rings.  And rightly so.

I saw a simple batter recipe about a million years ago in a magazine or newspaper, had the urge to try it, and the rest is history.  Imagine the light and crispy canned French’s onion rings you put on top of a green bean casserole.  Now, imagine them hot, fresh and just sprinkled with salt.  Imagine piles of them.  Put them on your burger, dip them in ketchup, just eat them!  Fast, before everyone else catches on.

Mark's Favorite Onion Rings

There is no doubt that the batch made for Mark’s party the other night turned out really well because of my portable deep fryer.  Turning these rings in a saute pan takes a bit too much attention.  If you don’t have a little fryer, just use a fairly deep, but narrow sauce pan and place about 3″ of canola or vegetable oil in the pan.  The optimal temperature for deep frying is between 350 and 360 degrees.  Less than 350 and the food will absorb too much fat and taste greasy.  Hotter than 360, the exterior will cook too quickly, leaving the interior undercooked.  This may sound too precise for some, but using a candy/deep fry thermometer makes the process simple.  A sample onion ring tossed into the hot oil should also give you the clue as to whether the oil is hot enough to begin.  The food should start bubbling the second it’s dropped into the oil.

Add enough of the food (other vegetables coated in this batter fry up nicely too), to make your batches efficient, but keep in mind the temperature of the oil will drop with each addition, causing the cooking process to slow down.  Give the rings room to swim.

Another tip is to salt them as soon as they come out of the oil, but not before.  Salt is one of a few things that will cause the oil to break down.  You might want to experiment with some salt and pepper combinations to jazz your rings up even more.  Maybe a bit of cayenne or chipotle, smoked paprika, or even a bit of cinnamon and sugar.  Ooh, deep fried sweet potato fries with chipotle, cinnamon and sugar… a story for another day.

One last thing before we start; plan ahead.  The batter is easy, but it takes a while to rest before it’s ready.

Mark’s Favorite Onion Rings

• 1 cup beer
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 2 sweet onions, such as vidalia or mayan sweets
• canola or vegetable oil
• salt and pepper

Pour the beer over the flour in a small bowl; stir with a whisk until smooth.  Allow the batter to rest for 4 hours.  This gives the gluten in the flour time to develop.  Slice the onion into rings about 1/4 to 1/3 inch thick  and place in large, open bowl.  Pour the rested batter over the onion rings, gently mixing to coat.  The rings can stay in the batter for a while before you cook them.

Heat the oil to 350-360 degrees.  Drop a sample ring in the oil and cook until golden brown.  Remove to a platter that is lined with paper towels or brown grocery bags.  Salt and/or season as soon as the rings are removed from the oil so that the salt will adhere.  Cool slightly before eating.

If you are working in small batches, line a baking sheet with additional paper towels and keep in a 200 degree oven while the remaining rings are frying.

Caution: if you and your guests beginning nibbling before the bulk of the rings are fried, you won’t have enough rings to add to the dinner table.

Enjoy!

Jackie’s Bacon Squares

My mom always steals the show when she brings these little noshes to an event.  During our pre-travel Italy events last year, the crowd gobbled them up, so it was only natural that our newly forming 2011 Travel Group should get the benefit of these tasty morsels.

Word travels fast when a basket of Bacon Squares hits the door.  Selfish people might think to keep the news to themselves, but everyone starts raving… and eating these snacks.  Before you know it, they’re gone.  It’s best, I guess that I didn’t even get ONE last time, because one is really never enough.  Sort of like the reason I don’t keep potato chips in the house, once you get started, it’s too hard to stop.

Try these with some bubbly at an appetizer party.  The salty, crunchy combo is perfect with cava, prosecco or champagne.  You will too form a love-hate relationship with this recipe.  A guilty pleasure for sure.

Jackie’s Bacon Squares

• Keebler Club Crackers
• 1 pound sliced bacon (not thick sliced)
• parmesan cheese

Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Preheat oven to 275 degrees.  Cut the sliced bacon into quarters (each slice will now be 4 small slices).  Line the baking sheet with crackers and sprinkle with parmesan cheese.  Place one of the 1/4 slices of bacon on each cracker and again sprinkle with parmesan cheese.  One pound of bacon will make 60-68 crackers.

Bake for approximately 2 hours.  The bacon and the crackers will be crispy.  Mom says “enjoy the compliments”.

Happy New Year!

Add some zest to your life!

At the Crescent Hill Women’s Club a few weeks ago, the topic was Holiday Foods without stress.  I demonstrated a Dried Fruit Compote, and for a variation, I mentioned adding some orange zest to the warm mixture to infuse the fragrance and taste throughout the recipe.  I warned everyone, that with citrus season nearly upon us, ‘Whatever you do, don’t discard the peels!’

Blogging about orange, lemon, lime and grapefruit peels seemed like a great thing to do, so here I am.  Citrus is available to us all year long, like most fruits and vegetables.  But, citrus is ‘in season’ during winter months. There is a reason that oranges and tangerines show up in Christmas stockings.  Watch the Susan Sarandan , Claire Danes, Winona Ryder version of Little Women – it’s my fav – and look for the oranges.

Remember that zest is the colored part of the citrus fruit peel only – don’t include the white ‘pith’ underneath the zest, it will be bitter.  So, as you are peeling or grating, don’t push too deeply.

OK, I am going to give you a list of one million things to do with citrus zest, most of them really simple.  As a finale, I’ll outline a detailed process of making candied orange peel that you can use in lots of recipes throughout the coming year.

To start, here is a list of my favorite tools for working with the peels and zest of citrus fruits:

• Fingers – to remove tangerine and mandarin peels
• Julienne Peeler – to remove little, thin strips for garnishes
• Potato Peeler – to remove wide strips, which you may then chop in the food processor or by hand
• Zester – a good one will dig a bit deeper than the J-peeler, and provide lovely, curling strips for garnishes or for candying
• Chef’s knife – to finely mince the zest, and to cleanly peel an orange or grapefruit for slicing or sectioning
• Paring knife, to score oranges and grapefruit for removing peel
• Rasp grater – Microplane or Pampered Chef has the best.  This tool will shave off tiny fragments that you can add directly without further fuss.

Now, here is my list of 1 Million things to do with citrus zest:

1. Drop a piece of orange of lemon zest into your cup of hot tea while it’s brewing
2. Grate orange peel into your oatmeal or chocolate chip cookie batter
3. Use orange and lemon peel in hot apple cider
4. Lemon zest goes well with blueberries – in pound cake, scones…
5. Make simple syrups infused with any citrus zest
6. Flavor salad dressings with finely grated zest
7. Make citrus sugar (orange, lemon, lime) by drying the zest in a jar of sugar
8. Add zest to icings for the most intense flavor
9. Add a mixture of orange and lemon zest to a simple cheesecake recipe
10. Make my Brown Rice Salad
11. Add orange zest and ginger to sweet potatoes or carrots
12. Add lime zest and juice and honey to cantaloupe chunks
13. Add lime or lemon zest and juice to salsa
14. Use the zest of red grapefruit along with tarragon for an incredible sorbet

OK, so maybe it wasn’t a million, but hopefully a few ideas that you hadn’t thought of yourself.  Here is my favorite thing to do with lots of oranges – if you are lucky, someone will give you a fruit basket for the holidays.  Or just buy yourself a bag of oranges during their season.  Most times, I don’t get to this until January.

Candied Orange Peel

• Score 3 thick skinned oranges into quarters and remove the peel, zest, pith and all.  Use the oranges for salads or snacking. Slice the peel into 1/4″ long slices.
• Place the orange peel slices  in a heavy bottomed sauce pan and cover with water.  Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes.  Drain and rinse.  Repeat this process twice more.
• Return the peel to the pan and add 1 cup sugar and 1/2  cup water.  Bring to a boil once again and stir until the sugar is dissolved.  Reduce to simmering and cook and watch closely until most all the liquid is absorbed.  Gently stir until the liquid is completely absorbed – the peel will still be moist.
• Line a rimmed sheet pan with parchment paper or lightly oil with vegetable oil.
• Pour the orange peel out onto the sheet pan, and separate the sliced orange peel with a fork.  Be careful!  The peel is blisteringly hot – don’t touch it with your fingers.
• While the peel is still hot, sprinkle with granulated sugar (extra fine is best), and allow the peel to absorb the sugar.  Repeat this process until the peel is dusted  with a light, but dry sugar coat.  Allow to rest on the pan until completely cool and dry.
• You may decide to dip one end of the orange peel slices into melted dark chocolate – YUM.
• Dicing some into small square will get you ready to try baking some Florentines.  But that’s a blog post for another day.

Enjoy!

Dried Fruit Compote Spans the Menu

My brother was married last night in an intimate ceremony at his condo, with family and a few very close friends.  Still clinging to the last vestiges of Italy, I planned the menu of Mediterranean appetizers, a salad, some pasta dishes and two desserts.

The chocolate cake that the bride requested was prepared by the Bakery at Sullivan University, and stacked and garnished with fresh raspberries and mint by yours truly. The filling was an orange buttercream and the cake was enrobed with chocolate ganache.  How bad could it have been?

The groom’s cake, in a departure from the usual chocolate, (and since that base was already covered) was a cheesecake lightly scented with orange and vanilla and topped with a dried fruit compote.  I usually serve this compote atop vanilla ice cream or even Brie or goat cheese, but I decided it would be a great fall-ish topping for the second dessert.

So, again I go for ‘Flexible Food’.  Something that can span the range of menu items from appetizer to entree to dessert.  Imagine a pork roast or even grilled lamb chops with a bit of this syrupy glaze spooned over.  It would certainly fit the bill on the Thanksgiving table snuggled up next to the stuffing and roasted bird.

A wheel or wedge of Brie (the cheese, not the dog) with a generous topping of the compote served with crisp crackers is welcome at either end of a special dinner.  Served with a dessert wine or port, it would replace the customary ‘dessert course’ and give your meal a certain Continental flair.

Another of the many positive attributes of this dish is the fact that you can make it and keep it stored in the fridge for weeks; really handy with the holidays nearing.  I had planned to prepare this a few weeks ago when I was shopping and picked up some Calmyrna figs, dried plums (yep, prunes), dried cherries and dried cranberries.  I had a stash of dried mission figs in the pantry. Apricots and dates work too – use what you have or buy your favorites.

The liquid called for here is flexible too.  I began making this a few years ago with port, and have used both tawny and ruby.  I have used sweet wines like muscadet.  Yesterday I had none of the above, but did have some Sauvignon Blanc and a bottle of a nice Muscat dessert wine.  And so, I began.

Dried Fruit Compote

Dried Fruit Compote

• 5 cups of mixed dried fruits, large pieces diced
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 cups white wine or port
• 1 cup sweet wine or port
• 1-3″ cinnamon stick
• 1 vanilla bean, split
• 2-3 whole cloves or a 1″ piece of fresh ginger
• 2 Tbls cornstarch
• 2 Tbls red wine vinegar or lemon juice

In a shallow 3 quart pan, place the fruit, sugar, and all the wine except 1/4 cup.  Stir together, add the vanilla bean, cinnamon stick and cloves and/or ginger,  and heat to a simmer.  In a small measuring cup or bowl, stir the cornstarch, lemon juice and remaining wine together to smooth out the lumps. When the fruit has simmered enough to soften slightly (about 5 minutes), stir in the cornstarch mixture and return to a simmer.  Cook until thickened slightly and the liquid has turned from cloudy to clear.  Remove from heat and cool.

Move the mixture to small glass jars or to one large storage container.  Keep chilled.  The compote will keep for 3-4 weeks.

Enjoy!

Cheesy, I know…

Last night, I cracked open one of my most valuable souvenirs from my Italy trip – my kilo of authentic Parmigiano  Reggiano.  Granted, I’ve only been home for  6 days and it wasn’t like I was saving it till Christmas or anything, but cutting open that vacuum sealed package was none the less a bit of a celebration.  Good friends Carson and Melanie came by to talk about the trip and look at the multitude of pictures I had taken in Italy, so I thought it would be a great opportunity to try a bit of the cheese as an ‘antipasto’.

I’ve begun my scout of all the wine shops in town to find a variety of Italian wines – yes, I am a geek.  I fully intend to milk every drop of my Italian enthusiasm for as long as it lasts.  Perhaps until next October when I return to Italy.  That aside, I picked up a bottle of white wine from the Orvieto region, called Salviano.  This was a lucky choice.  I felt like last night was the right time to crack this open, hopefully a good match to the parmesan.  I was right (and lucky).  The wine is a blend of the typical Trebbiano grape, 30%; Gechetto, 30%; Chardonnay, 20% and Sauvingnon Blanc, 20%.

Now, don’t expect much of an analysis and professional sounding review of the wine. I haven’t reached a point where I feel confident about describing and remembering the nuances of the bottle.  But, just thinking that I should makes me want to go back and get another bottle.  Yeah, that’s it!

What I can tell you is that the wine was a great cocktail white, smooth enough just to sip, but acidic enough to match up with the creamy, salty Parmesan.  I’ve come to know that you don’t need to put anything with Parmesan Reggiano  to make the perfect appetizer.  Just lay out a chunk and a fork and let your guests break off little bits.

The cheese was like heaven in our mouths, creamy upon the chew and grainy with salt that comes from a bath in a salt water brine that the cheese receives.  We were fortunate enough to get to see much of the Parmesan making process when in Italy’s food valley about 11 days ago.  In one day, we watched Parmigiano Reggiano made, had lunch, visited a Prosciutto plant,  and were given a tour of a Balsamic Vinegar operation in Modena.  You’re jealous, aren’t you?

 

Italian experts making Parmigiano Reggiano

 

The curd is processed in these huge copper kettles.  You can see the steam rising off the cheese.  These guys make two huge wheels of Parmigiano in each of the 6 kettles daily.  This plant producing 12 wheels per day.

To be called Parmigiano Reggiano, a consortium watches over the operations of all the plants.  Milk from cows raised in this one area is used to make the cheese.  By products make also butter (which we had – yum!) and other cheeses are also made here, but only a certain process and materials make Parmigiano Reggiano.  Every wheel is stamped with the plants information and you can actually track which manufacturer processed the cheese.

We sampled cheese that was 12, 24, and 36 months of age.  The brothers who own and operate this particular manufacturing plant, Spaccio & Rocco broke open a wheel for us to sample and had a number of other cheeses available for us to try.

 

A wheel of Parmigiano cracked open just for us!

 

So while I was in the shop (as did others in the group), I bought my kilo of Parmigiano, some other cheeses and some souvenir PR cheese knives to take home to friends as gifts.  On  our next to last night in Italy, we had a gathering where most everyone brought a little something to the table:  cheese, butter, breadsticks (glorious rosemary breadsticks), biscotti, wine, etc.  We used the knives to cut up and serve the cheeses.

When the party was over and we headed to the restaurant for dinner, I bundled up the knives and hid them in Tony’s sportcoat pocket, still with cheese clinging to them.  Packing up to head back to Louisville a few days later, I absentmindedly placed the bundle in my carry on, not really noticing what they were, just souvenirs.

Security pulls me and my bag aside, and when they unwrapped my little bundle, they confiscated the knives (still crusty with cheese) and copied down my passport information.  I suppose I’ll be on file now as a possible terrorist, having 4 Parmigiano Reggiano knives (all of 2 1/2″) in my bag, ready to hand to other cell members to assist in my taking over the plane.  America’s most wanted, here I come.

Ciao!

Lucky, that’s me…

I am sooooo lucky!  Four days span between me and my trip to Italy.  But that’s not all.  I have come off a week of long days and details.  Frustrating meetings and wine tastings.  There is a balance in life that when you can stand back see things clearly, it’s simply amazing. We all have a choice as to how to look at what life deals us.  If we’re lucky, we can see things objectively.

Spending time with a dear friend tonight, I can see that this week gave me opportunities to understand people that I passed on.  To hear people needing help that I chose to ignore.  To react when I should have reflected, and to learn when I chose to  be heard.  Who has a friend who will put in velvet terms what you need to hear?  I do.

Blink, and you’ll miss the point.  Think selfishly and you’ll need to wait until another opportunity to learn the same lesson comes  ’round.

Philosophical?  Yes, I am feeling that way this evening.  I came out of a SERIOUS wine education course this week securing the bounty of a dozen bottles with about 1 glass of wine left in them to savor.  After a few of those, and the charge of cooking dinner for a dozen women enjoying a ‘girls’ night out’, I am feeling quite philosophical.  And lucky!

I made a huge platter of seafood risotto, laden with lobster, sea scallops and shrimp.  The risotto was enhanced with a lovely Pinot Gris, off dry and full of character.  I seasoned the risotto simply with fresh tarragon and parsley and a very conservative dose of heavy cream.  Just enough to enrich the broth of the seafood, but not so much to make the dish heavy.  Served with oven roasted asparagus, the dish got rave reviews.

I came home to a quiet house, a crossword puzzle and time to relax before I head off to bed.  Just a few more days and I’ll be dozing over the Atlantic on my way to a Tuscan vacation that books and movies are based upon.  My Life.  How lucky am I?  Very.

More soon.  M

Summer Sings with Tomatoes

It might seem redundant, but another post about Tomatoes seems altogether fair to me.  Tomatoes from the farmer’s market have come in by the box full.  My favorite dish was the fresh tomato marinara that I made for my son’s 18th birthday.  I am not sure which of these two salads that I made recently was best; both are worth trying.

For a business meeting at my home, I prepared a BLT salad. Complete with colorful greens, heirloom tomatoes and a simple dressing, it was sort of a play on the sandwich of the same name, but made much ‘dressier’ presentation.

BLT salad

Another rendition of the classic ‘Caprese’ salad was included in my dinner with friends last night.  A base of fresh, baby arugula topped with a collection of my neighbor’s tomatoes and some from my yard too.  The bright yellow and green tomato taking center stage is the ‘Green Zebra’ plucked right from the vine yesterday afternoon.  ‘Juliet’, ‘Sungold’ and a handful of tiny red grape tomatoes rounded out the mix.  Normally, I would serve a balsamic vinaigrette (Cook With Mary brand of course), but last night, I opted for the ultra simple 18 year old balsamic vinegar and a bottle of walnut oil that I received recently as a gift.  Wow!  What a flavor combination.  I topped the salad with some fresh Feta cheese rather than the usual fresh mozzarella.  It is amazing to me how such a simple salad can have such a wide range of tastes just by changing up the  cheese and dressing choices.

Caprese Salad

Let me know what your favorite version of a classic summer tomato dish might be.

BLT Salad Dressing

• 2/3 cup mayonnaise
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 Tbls vinegar
• salt and pepper to taste
• chopped fresh herbs: chives, parsley, tarragon – to taste

Mix all ingredients together and serve with a platter full of lettuce leaves, sliced fresh tomatoes and crisp bacon.  Bread is optional!

Enjoy!