I’m having the most amazing time in the mountains and also totally kicking myself for not walking around with my camera glued to my arm.  I promise to do better.  Last night I went to a wine tasting at Tuscany in Salt Lake City.  Everyone in Utah is so unbelievably friendly, and contrary to some peoples beliefs, fabulously interesting.  We sat at a table of 10 and met new people and local food purveyors.  I had a very entertaining chat with a couple starting their own wine making venture who also race yachts on the Great Salt Lake in their free time.  It’s really nice to get out and have interesting conversation over gourmet food and fine wines with total strangers.  I highly recommend it.

I had the most fabulous made by a true Italian from Piedmont.  I of course didn’t photograph it and can’t remember the name of the salami, but I’ll figure it out.  He ran out of cards so I have a name to follow up with all of his info.  I did find Central Market carries his line, so I’ll be sure to let you know as soon as I’ve figured it out.

I also sampled the Promontory, the Barely Buzzed, and the Bandaged Cajun Rubbed Promontory from the Beehive Cheese Company.  I really liked the two Promontory cheeses and love the idea of adding more lavender into my cooking.  I’m definitely inspired to make a lavender salad dressing after that burst of inspiration.  But after perusing their website, what I really want to try is the Seehive, and I’ll definitely be checking for that at the Park City Farmers Market next week or the Salt Lake Farmers Market.  Check back tomorrow for my review of the Park City Farmers Market!

I actually made this dish before I left but never got around to blogging about it.  It’s based off of a Barefoot Contessa recipe, but I can never find the morels she uses, and unless I make it to certain stores, I have troubles finding the creme fraiche.  By all means, if you have the ability, get thee to a Whole Foods or Central Market or other like store and get the creme fraiche.  It  works without it, but once you’ve tasted it with, you’ll never want to go back.  I personally love this dish with fresh chanterelles, but those can be cumbersome to track down as well.  This time I made it with the dried Monterey Blend Mushrooms I can find at most any grocery in Dallas.  I would assume they could be found other places as well.  This dish is definitely rich, but I generally am not a cream sauce fan and this is just such a savory sauce.

Chicken with Monterey Blend Mushrooms – adapted from Ina Garten’s/Barefoot Contessa’s Chicken with Morels

1 oz Monterey Blend Mushrooms

3 cups boiling water

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

kosher salt

fresh ground pepper

1/4 c. butter

2 large shallots, finely chopped

4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 c. Madeira wine

3/4 c. sour cream

1/4 c. heavy cream, whipped

1 c. heavy cream

juice of one lemon, about 3 tbsps

Preheat oven to 375.  Pour boiling water over mushrooms and soak for 40 minutes.  Drain, rinse thoroughly, repeat.  Dry with towel to remove any remaining water, then chop finely.

In a skillet, melt 1/8 c. butter on medium low heat.  Season chicken breasts with salt and pepper, then dredge with flour.   Brown on both sides – approx 10 minutes.  Place chicken breasts in an oven proof casserole.

Add an 1/8 c. butter to skillet, then saute shallots, garlic, and mushrooms.  Saute on medium heat 3 minutes stirring with a wooden spatula.  Add Madeira to skillet and reduce by half.  About 5 minutes.  Add sour cream, whipped cream, cream, lemon juice, 1 tsp salt and 12 turns pepper.  Boil until mixture starts to thicken and darken, about 12 minutes, stirring every minute or two.  Pour the sauce over the chicken then cook in oven 12-15 minutes or until chicken is cooked through.

When I write about a recipe that isn’t really a recipe, I get very self-conscious.  Sort of how I feel about why anyone would you want to read the footnotes.  If it’s not important enough to make it in the text, why add it at all?  I’m guilty of this.  Whenever a book has a quote after the paragraph intro, I always skip it.  Then I realize the author spent serious time picking and choosing and examining the text of the quote, feel bad, and go back and try and read it.  Only often, they’re ambiguous and foreshadowing and I’m simply not cool enough or deep enough to get it.  My husband kicks ass at that.  And that is one of the many reasons I love him, cause he can explain the importance of quotes and symbolism. 

On a similar note, if you’re looking for a book to read, and you enjoyed Crime and Punishment (probably the best book ever!), but also have a fancy for magic,  I can not endorse the Night Watchseries by Sergei Lukyanenko enough.  It is fabulous.  Even if I skipped some of the quote sections. 

This chicken is pretty much the chicken I made here.  But I did two additional things that made it so much nicer.  First I grilled lemon halves for everyone to squeeze on their chicken.  You could also do oranges or limes if you prefer.  Just don’t drop it on the floor as you’re taking them off the grill, cause all the the yummy juices will go squirting all over the ground.  ACK!  I gave that one to the kids.  The other thing I added was re-using the marinade as a dipping sauce.  I read an article about reusing marinade by heating it on the stove for five minutes.  I went ahead and boiled it for 10 minutes to be on the safe side, but the result was a wonderful dipping sauce.  It was delicious and so summery!  Eat outside, have a light and refreshing meal and enjoy summer!  It will be gone before we know it!  I’m totally on par with my goal of spending 85% of my waking hours outdoors.  Yay Vitamin D!  Tomorrow is the Farmers Market.  Can’t wait to post. 

Cheers friends.

I’ve been off the grid for a couple of days while I made my way out to the mountains.  20 hour car ride with 2 preschoolers means I’ve been eating pretty terribly.  I think a stop at Applebee’s was the highlight of my culinary experiences en route.  And that’s really not saying very much.  But now I’ve made it to one of the most beautiful places on earth.  I’ll be cooking some, and I’ll be reviewing some restaurants.  Plus I’m going to make it to at least some of the Park City Food and Wine Festival.  I’ve already been up in my first chair lift and am loving every minute! 

Just in case you’re planning a road trip, I highly recommend DoubleShot – I drank at least 6 and Zone Bars in Strawberry Yogurt for snacking.

It’s hard to write about something when it didn’t turn out quite perfectly.  It’s hard not to get caught up in the what should have beens and the what could have beens and what ifs.  But first and foremost, I started this blog as a diary for my personal cooking adventures.  So when I came back to a dish 3 months later, I could remember what I thought about it the last time and what my notes were, aiding my journey to the ultimate culinary perfection.  Things about this recipe turned out really, really well; and overall, I’m thrilled with my personal interpretation of scampi style.  There’s nothing like taking an idea from the top of your head and having it result in flavor the exact product of your imagination.

The sauce was fantastic.  It was light, it was zesty, it was flavor-packed.  The shrimp was mediocre.  Was it because of the shrimp I purchased or the cooking style?  I don’t know, but I do know I’m going to do two things differently next time.  Firstly my shrimp, I bought wild catch Gulf of Mexico Shrimp from Whole Foods – 16-20 count.  I’m thinking due to their size, that they were brown shrimp.  I’m pretty sure I prefer the Gulf White Shrimp flavor.  Whole Foods had the White shrimp, but the case looked scrawny and picked over so I went for the larger browns.  Second, was my cooking method.  I absolutely loved the shrimp I wrote about here, so why mess with a good thing?  I’d make the sauce the identical way the next time, but roast the shrimp then toss everything together with the pasta.  Also, my husband and I decided that due to the light flavor and consistency of the sauce, next time I’ll use regular old cappellini, not the whole wheat variety.

All those things aside, the kitchen smelled fabulous, the meal was very well recieved, (I’m just being picky), and this sauce could easily translate to a chicken or turkey cutlet recipe.  Oh and hey!  It’s quick to prepare, minus the time spent peeling and deveining, so get your fishmonger to do that for you if you can!  I love the word fishmonger.  Just rolls right off the tounge.

Gulf Shrimp Scampi Style

1.5 lbs gulf shrimp, peeled and deveined

3 tbsps butter

1 large shallot, very finely diced

5 cloves garlic, finely diced

1/2 c. pinot grigio

1/4 c. fresh squeezed lemon juice

1/2 tsp kosher salt

4 turns fresh ground pepper

2-3 tbsps fresh parsley, finely chopped

In a large, heavy bottomed skillet, melt butter then add shallot and garlic, heat two and a half minutes on medium heat, then add wine, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.  Stir, cook another 30 seconds then add shrimp, cover, cook 1.5 minutes then turn shrimp cook another 1.5 minutes and add parsley, stir, then serve tossed with cappellini pasta.

Cheers!

**Note if you follow my corrections and use the roasted shrimp with this sauce, I would cook the sauce the same way, using the total amounts of cooking time, even without the shrimp added, then dump in the shrimp just before the parsley, then add the pasta and toss together.

A few months ago we had dinner at a restaurant here in Dallas called The Porch.  Our friends ordered the fried cheese appetizer.  I am all about fried cheese, any time, any place, any cheese.  But this was truly exceptional.  We all agreed, and I vowed to attempt a home re-creation.  The menu lists the appetizer as Fried Port Salute Cheese and Red Pepper Marinara.

Out of the box on my first attempt, I’m pretty pleased.  The marinara was killer – even though mine doesn’t actually have red pepper in it.  It’s probably cost prohibitive unless you grow your own tomatoes.  Not that it was crazy expensive, just due to the labor and the quantity of sauce you get as an end result compared to the wide availability of marinaras at the grocery.  That said, I felt very Italian, warm and fuzzy making my own.  I’m planning on making chicken Parmesan later this week, and my thought was that this recipe would yield enough sauce for both.  It turned out to be quite a bit less than I imagined, but this recipe as it stands would be enough for four chicken parmesans.  Or if you’re making it for this, probably 3 generous ramekins of sauce.  The batter was good, but could have stood to be a little thicker, one of my sticks got a hole, leading to all my cheese spilling out, leading to messy oil.  But 1 casualty on a first time experience is not too shabby.

Port Salute cheese was originally made by a group of French monks in the late 18th century.  It’s softer than gouda, softer still than fontina, and has a very mild flavor.  Possibly I’d call it a little firmer than a brie, but with less of a wine taste.  It’s amazing.  And hard to find.  But I found it and turned out this attempt.  Incidentally, John said his mother mixed Port Salute with butter then kept it around for garlic bread spread, which sounds sinful and delicious.

I chose to fry in safflower oil because of it’s suitability for high heat cooking – stable up to 445 degrees.

Fried Port Salute Cheese

1/2 lb. port salute cheese, sliced into 8 sticks

1 and 1/2 c. flour

2 eggs

1 c. ice water

32 oz. safflower oil

Heat safflower oil in a heavy bottomed pan until 375 degrees.  Chill cheese sticks in freezer for 10 minutes prior to preparing.

In a small bowl, combine flour, eggs and water with a whisk.  Dip cheese sticks in mixture to coat, then drop into hot oil 2 at a time, letting fry until lightly browned on all sides, turning as necessary.

Fresh Marinara

11 tomatoes on the vine

6 cloves garlic, chopped

2 large shallots, chopped

olive oil

kosher salt

fresh ground pepper

1/4 c.  pinot grigio

Leaves from 6 sprigs of fresh oregano

5-6 leaves fresh basil, finely chopped

In a large pan, bring water to a boil.  Core tomatoes, and score an X on the skin of the opposite side with a paring knife.  Drop tomatoes in boiling water for 1 minute 10 secs, then immediately remove to a bowl of ice water.  The skin will now peel easily from your tomato starting from your X.  Quarter tomatoes. Pour out your boiling water.

In same pan, warm 5 tbsps olive oil.  Add garlic and shallots, cook for 2 minutes on medium high, then add tomatoes.  Cook on medium high for an hour covered, stirring occasionally and squishing your tomatoes with a wooden spatula.  Remove lid, stir, add wine, herbs, and 1 tsp salt, and 8 turns of pepper.  Cook on low heat another half hour, then taste and adjust seasoning if needed.

Cheers!

This post will wrap up the party food and I’ll be back to our regularly featured programming.  I have an exciting plan to recreate an appetizer I had at The Porch Restaurant tomorrow, so tune back in for that.

The end of the party preparation had me totally feeling like the Iron Chef.  There was a point when I was actually running from the kitchen to the grill and back again.  The clock was winding down, the chicken was on the grill, the crostini were in the oven, I was whipping cream for my sauces and had pasta on the stove.  I was flying.  It was really fun.  Intense, but I loved it.  Kind of like that two hour power yoga class I took yesterday in an 85 degree room, standing next to the world’s toughest lady, over 40 weeks pregnant Darcie!  Intense, but I loved it.

This Bruschetta recipe came from one of those grocery store checkout aisle recipe pamphlet things.  The ones that are sort of like a magazine, but with no articles and the pamphlet covers some bizarre theme, like Church Potluck meals or the entirely crock-pot pamphlet or such.  Well this one’s theme was all recipes involving 7 ingredients or less, but every recipe involved Dijon mustard.  I’ve long since lost the pamphlet, but I found the exact recipe on the Kraft website, (Kraft owns Grey Poupon).  I’ve taken this to several parties and people always ask me for the recipe.  It’s extremely solid and very easy.  I brush my cut up baguette slices with olive oil, then toast them in a 425 degree oven.  I made double this recipe for the party and used two whole baguettes and everything was gone.  Click through to the Kraft recipe here, it’s delicious fresh tomatoes, green onions, olives and classic vinaigrette.

The herbed pasta salad is adapted from a Martha Stewart recipe, I swapped the ratios on the herbs and changed a few things.  Below is the recipe as I made it.  The garlic infused olive oil was very nice and this would be a great process for making chili oil as well.  This salad can be made the day before.

Herbed Pasta Salad

1000 g. (2.2 lbs) Casarecci pasta

2/3 c. olive oil

9 large cloves garlic, sliced

1/2 c. chopped basil

1 bunch parley, finely chopped

Murray River Salt

Fresh Ground Pepper

Bring a large pot of water to a boil, add 1 tbsp olive oil and 1 tsp of salt, and pasta.  Cook 9 minutes or until al dente.  Drain.

In a small saucepan, cook olive oil and garlic over medium heat to sizzling then cook a minute to two more.  Remove from heat and let stand 10 minutes.

Pour oil through a strainer onto pasta to remove garlic pieces.  Add chopped herbs, stir then season to taste.

This recipe comes from from the Barefoot Contessa Parties! Cookbook.  If you like to throw parties or even if you just like to occasionally cook for a few extra people, you need this cookbook.  It is fabulous start to finish.  You also need Williams-Sonoma’s Complete Entertaining Cookbook.  Good Lord!  If you follow that link, Amazon has used copies available starting at a quarter.  And after you buy the book, if anyone would like to buy me my dream home on page 199, I promise to throw that exact Gala Buffet with you as the guest of honor.

I’ve written here how I feel about corn.  This was a new preparation style for me, but it was absolutely killer, and I may never boil corn again.  As I said in the beginning of this party breakdown, recipes for large guest list parties need to be able to be served hot or cold.  Check.  Since technically, this way my four year old’s birthday party, I had to serve at least some kid friendly food.  Check.  Most kids I know like corn if they eat anything.  And this is a super easy recipe.  The hardest part is cutting the corn off the cob without making a giant mess of corn all over the counter.  For that, I suggest placing the end of the corn in your pan and cutting at an angle rather than trying to cut on a cutting board.  I didn’t try it, but cutting directly into a deep colander also would reduce the errant flying corn pieces.

Next week I’m headed to the mountains for a month.  The kids are going to camp and I’m going to focus on writing, building my website, cooking and hiking.  I plan to spend 85% of my daytime outdoors and the rest of the time I’ll be cooking.  I absolutley love Utah in the summer and am so excited for the festivals, the Farmer’s Markets, and having the kiddos in camp for a bit so I have some time to focus on me.  I promise to take lots of pictures and review everything here.

Sauteed Fresh Corn

You can find Barefoot Contessa’s recipe here.  I used 15 ears of corn, 5 tbsps of butter, 1 1/2 tsp kosher salt and slightly under 1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper.   Phenomenal!

If you eat beef, it would be borderline insanity not to love beef tenderloin sandwiches.  Tenderloin, though expensive, is such a great cut of meat, it’s almost impossible to mess up.  Lots of people marinate them and otherwise season, I go for utter simplicity in my tenderloin and let the meat show its unparalleled flavor.

Costco has a great price on whole beef tenderloins.  You have to trim them yourself.  If the idea of trimming raw beef makes you want to run to the hills screaming like it does to my mother, then you can pay a butcher more to handle that for you.  I chose the biggest tenderloin they had, just over 7lbs.  After trimming, it was probably 6lbs.  We did go through all the tenderloin at the party, as is usually the case with tenderloin.  I would guess I sliced it to about 36 sandwich slices.  I counted at the time, but of course with the crazy time lines, I forgot my actual count.

Really watch your meat temperatures on this recipe.  I can not extol the virtues of a meat and an oven thermometer enough.  My oven is awful, dial setting at least 50 degrees off from my oven thermometer.  And even after correcting and verifying that, I often find wild differences in cooking times from recipes.  Medium rare beef needs to be cooked to an internal temperature of 135.  Another beauty of cooking a whole tenderloin is you get different degrees of doneness within the same roast.  My mother and sister border on the well done side of things and my father and I prefer the medium rare end of the spectrum.  This method works well for us, but if you are looking to serve only medium rare, I would recommend checking the temperature in the smaller and thicker ends, then cutting your roast and removing the smaller half when it reaches 135 then continuing to cook the thicker end until it reaches 135.

Beef Tenderloin Sandwiches

Whole beef tenderloin, trimmed, room temperature

olive oil

kosher salt

fresh ground pepper

Preheat oven to 500 degrees.  Rub tenderloin with olive oil and sprinkle with kosher salt and pepper.  Cook tenderloin about 30 minutes, check internal temperature, then roast should finish within about 5 minutes more or so.  Cook to an internal temperature of 135 for medium rare.

Whipped Horseradish Cream

1/2 c. Heavy Whipping Cream

3 tbsp prepared horseradish

Whip cream with wire whisk until it forms soft peaks.  Add horseradish and stir to combine.

Blue Cheese Sauce

1/4 lb. crumbled blue cheese

2/3 c. sour cream

1/3 c. fresh whipped cream

3 tsp worcestershire

kosher salt

fresh ground pepper

Combine ingredients and season to taste.

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Planning to feed a large number of people can be daunting, but to me it’s the epitome of the culinary Olympics.  Athletes not only are driven to strive towards the ultimate challenge, but they also get an amazing rush from the event and the preparation leading just up to the event.  It’s the butterflies in the stomach, the sudden desire to just hop up and down a few times to warm up, the mental walk-throughs and plannings that get athletes to keep at it race after race, year after year.  Of course, there are always sore losers, the people who take a 2nd or 3rd or 11th place win so personally or hard on themselves, that as a loved one, you sit back watching thinking, why would you destroy yourself like this week after week?  If you can’t win, and your psyche tells you you must win, why not seek out another activity and quit beating yourself up?

Luckily, I’ve never been a blue ribbon kind of girl. I really, really don’t like losing either, but as long as I can come in approaching or withing the top quarter of entrants, I feel pretty solid.  I did *hate* swim team because I constantly came in 5th or 6th out of 6.  I don’t like to do things I am *bad* at, but I don’t necessarily have to win either.  I can say with full confidence I’ll have a rough time ever throwing a text book perfect party.  I’ll always forget the flowers, run low on time and fail to get the bar setup before arrival, or burn a loaf of bread, but in the end 90% will go the way I planned and that’s the part I enjoy.

The hardest part of planning party food is picking a menu that doesn’t have to be served immediately or piping hot, while still retaining a level of elegance and tasting enchanting.  My other challenges come from matters of time lines, quantities, delegation, budgets, and presentation.  Usually in that order for me.   The flow chart definitelyhelps me with the time lines, though I really have to force myself to a menu early in the week to get the flow chart arranged properly, starting with the shopping and ingredients.  The quantities are still a big problem for me, in an effort to never ever run out of food, I generally wind up way over purchasing in a couple of categories.  Delegation has always been an issue for me.  It’s partly a control problem and it’s partly a mellowness problem that I really don’t like telling other people what to do.  But I’ve definitely earned my sometimes nickname of Mussolanie in the kitchen.  Budgets, eh?  What can I say, there’s never enough money even with generous budgets.  My husband always wanted me to spend less, and I always wanted to spend more.  But that’s why we balance each other.  Presentation is always a constant problem for me – I’m a cook not a cleaner and I can destroy a kitchen in about 5 minutes.  That said, I certainly know how to properly restore the order, it’s just hard for me to manage while in the midst of the process.  And so far, I haven’t found any little sprites to follow me along straightening and ordering all the while staying gracefully out of my way.

All of these are real challenges, but I look at it like a culinary decathlon.  And each time, I get a little bit better, at least in one category!  The menu for this party was too intense for one post, so I’m going to break it up and I’ll discuss breakdowns and successes in each section.  I’ll start with the Orange and Herb Grilled Chicken sandwiches.  The recipe below is exactly as I cooked it for the party.  Next time, I’ll  probably up the marinade to 8 hours, and make a specific sauce for the sandwiches.  I meant to make Andrew’s Chimichuri but ran out of time.  Guests used either of the sauces for the Beef Sandwiches which worked fine, but I think something lighter would capture the citrus nicely.  We have a lot of leftover chicken comparatively to the rest of the food, but I think I just made dramatically more chicken than anything else.  I’d calculate 3 chicken sandwiches per every 4 rsvps the next time, then use then divide by three to get my chicken breasts required.  All in all this was quite good and pretty easy and the leftovers have been tender and delicious.

Orange and Herb Grilled Chicken Sandwiches

1 c. fresh squeezed orange juice

1/4 c. fresh squeezed lime juice

1 c. olive oil

3 oz. fresh oregano, leaves pulled from stems

3 oz. fresh thyme

8 cloves garlic, whole

1 tsp kosher salt

1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper

18 chicken breasts, skinless boneless

Mix together ingredients for marinade.  Marinade in a ziploc or casserole for 6 hours, turning occasionally.  Prepare a grill on medium heat.  Place chicken breasts in a single layer and cook with the lid closed about 10 minutes, watching to ensure you aren’t over browning, turn cook about another 8 minutes.  Cook to an internal temperature of 165.  Slice on an angle in thirds and serve on mini croissant rolls.

I’m making a conscious effort not to waste as much food.  Both for environmentaland financial reasons.  And because it’s so, you know, wasteful.  I have a realproblem of buying some specific ingredient then only using a portion and the rest goes to waste as I fail to incorporate it into another recipe.  Like that partial package of wilted mint or the bottom quarter of the ricotta tub or the last portion of kalamata olives.  I don’t know why I do this; I like all these things that go to waste.  A psychologist could have a field day with my inability to use up the last portion of something, therefore letting it sits until it goes to waste anyway.  Anyhow, I’m working on it.

This recipe was super quick, easy, and again feels to me like it shouldn’t even count as a recipe.  But in case you bought the pesto for your sandwiches as well, and the remainder is sitting there mocking you every time you open the fridge, here’s one of probably a million ways you could go with the leftovers. 

Chicken Pesto Pasta

4 split or 2 whole chicken breasts

olive oil

kosher salt

fresh ground pepper

1/2 lb. basil pesto

1/2 package (250 grams) penne pasta

Parmigiano Reggiano

Preheat oven to 400.  Rub chicken breasts with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.  Place on a cookie sheet and roast in oven for 35 minutes or until chicken reaches an internal temperature of 160.  Remove skin and bones and cut chicken to bite size pieces.  Place in a bowl. 

Meanwhile to a large pot of boiling water, add a 1/2 tsp of salt and a 2 tsp olive oil.  Stir, then add your pasta.  Cook 9 minutes, testing to ensure pasta is al dente.  Drain, then add to bowl with reserved chicken.  Add petso stir and serve with a sprinkling of fresh grated parmesan cheese.