All the foods I love...old and new
Put these on any burger or sandwich for a great crunch!
1 cup white wine vinegar
1 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
1 large red onion, thinly sliced
Simmer vinegar and water, stirring in sugar until dissolved. Pour over an onion that you have placed in a glass container. Toss to coat, let cool, then cover and place in the refrigerator.
Everything is better with pancetta…
4 quarter inch slices of pancetta
2 English muffins, separated
4 large eggs
Hollandaise sauce (recipe below)
Bake pancetta at 350 degrees until browned, but not crispy.
Toast the english muffins to desired crunchy texture. I don’t like them too toasted because they become more difficult to cut and the eggs slide off the top.
Poach the 4 eggs to the desired point….runny? Not runny? I personally like the yoke runny so that it mixes with the hollandaise sauce.
Hollandaise sauce:
2/3 cup butter (I use unsalted)
1 tablespoon tarragon vinegar
2 tablespoons lemon juice
3 egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon powdered sugar
Pinch of salt
Pinch of cayenne
Melt the butter slowly in a small saucepan. In another small saucepan, heat the vinegar and lemon juice to boiling point.
In a blender, combine the egg yolks, sugar, salt and cayenne for a minute or so. With the motor running, gradually add the lemon juice mixture and blend for 30-45 seconds. Once the butter has reached the boiling point, add to the egg/lemon juice mixture in a slow drizzle, with the motor running. Blend for a minute until it is combined and creamy. Do not over blend!! I know this is not a traditional hollandaise, but it really is tough to find a better recipe.
At the point when everything is ready to assemble, place the pancetta on top of the muffin, add the egg and top with the hollandaise.
Okay…the measurements are estimates as the morning I made these at the ranch everyone was pretty bleary-eyed. The family, along with my son’s friend from Montreal, assembled their own as some like more eggs, less jambalaya, more hot sauce…you get the idea. If I could have snapped a picture of one of them eating their burrito, you would have taken the look of enjoyment as a testament to the goodness of the thing… because none of the photos do the burritos justice. You will just have to take my word for it and suffer through the BLAH photo of the end result.
2 cups jambalaya
2 cups hash brown
4 eggs
1 cup grated pepper jack cheese
4 strips bacon
Plenty of hot sauce
Tortillas (size may vary)
Heat the jambalaya either in the microwave or on the stove (I added a some red pepper flakes). Scramble the eggs, fry the hash browns, cook the bacon and assemble. So easy that really no instructions are necessary.
This is all pretty easy….
Brush one slice of bread with olive oil and toast. Once toasted, put a few thin slices of Burrata followed by a few slices of tomato. Add the fried egg and top with chopped basil. See? That easy…
It’s cloudy and cool today with the hint of rain (weird for California these days) which makes me want to cook. My friend told me about the Starvation Diet he read about in Harper’s magazine where you don’t eat until noon and stop eating by 9 (I stop by 8) and I have been doing it for a few weeks now. It’s not tough to follow but I do sort of dream about food until noon rolls around. So this is what I did…
I made a loaf of Gruyere bread (because I had the dough in the refrigerator) and thought about making a caprese sandwich using basil from my yard and tomatoes that I had ripening. Then I thought “egg”! My daughter got me hooked on burgers with a fried egg on top years ago and now it just seems so many recipes benefit from that gooey, creamy, runny yoke. So, that’s what I decided to make…easy, fresh and definitely worth the wait.
The other day I made my son a jambalaya breakfast burrito with the left over jambalaya, fried hash browns, pepper jack cheese and scrambled eggs. It was definitely blog worthy but I forgot to document and photograph the process! I think maybe a Post-It somewhere will help remind me what the heck I’m supposed to be doing!
My husband and I watched the Netflix docu-series, The Chef’s Table, over the weekend and were completely blown away by the stories of six of the world’s top chefs: Massimo Bottura, Ben Shewry, Magnus Nilsson, Frances Mallman, Niki Nakayama and Dan Barber. Their journeys were inspiring and their creativity contagious (we decided we are going to do a pit cooked Thanksgiving this year a la Ben Shewry). But it was their commitment to do what they were meant to do that stayed with me long after the series ended. They believed in themselves and the mission…I wish I had been more like that when I was in my 20’s.
To all you young people at that self-discovery intersection…find what you love, believe in yourself and do not quit. Envision your life and make it happen!
Good recipes are coming….
Happy Mother’s Day to you all!!!
As my son would tell you, there are not many things in life better than my Caprese Bruschetta (except my Eggs Benedict…another day). Bruschetta is great on its own, but when you add burrata cheese to the warm toast before the tomato mixture…yum.
I like to take the burrata out of the refrigerator when I start so it can come to room temperature. You don’t want cold cheese on warm bread.
2 cups tomatoes – small dice
4 gloves garlic – minced
1/4 cup basil – chiffonade
2 tablespoons garlic olive oil
1 teaspoon kosher salt
Toss all ingredients together and set aside for the flavors to come together.
Slice your baguette and brush with the garlic olive oil. Toast it just enough to warm it up and give the bread a slight crunch.
Now all that is left is to top the slices with the burrata and the tomato mixture. This is so good and filling that it has been a meal in this house many times…
For the bread: I made my own baguettes using the bread recipe on my blog. I added some garlic and thyme to the dough which gave the bread a nice flavor to go with the cheese and tomatoes. Baguettes require a few extra steps:
Shape a 1 pound piece of dough into an oblong shape about 6 inches long. You can make your baguettes as big, or small, as you like.
After letting the loaf rest for twenty minutes, fold one half up and then the other half down (similar to an envelope). Roll the dough over so the edges are underneath. Shape it to a length of about 9 inches, cover it with a light towel and let it rest again for twenty minutes. The rest will allow more air bubbles for form.
Shape the loaf into a baguette shape and place it in a linen bakers couche for one final rest…this will be the last one! Twenty more minutes and it will be ready for baking.
Score the top, brush with garlic olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt.
Bake and enjoy!
We are big hummus lovers in this house. We eat it for breakfast on lightly toasted pita with avocado, on burgers, on anything really. This recipe was a collaboration with my daughter as she found the first batch lacked the creamy texture she likes…so we added the avocado.
2 15.5 cans garbanzo beans (chickpeas), drained
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons garlic olive oil*
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup Tahini
2 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce from can (not two cans)
6 cloves garlic
1.5 teaspoons ground cumin
1 7oz jar roasted red bell peppers
4 sun dried tomatoes packed in oil, drained
1/4 ripe avocado
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon pepper
Blend garbanzo beans, lemon juice, water, olive oil, tahini, garlic, chipotle pepper and cumin in a food processor until smooth. Add sun dried tomatoes, bell peppers, avocado, salt and pepper and blend. Taste and add more salt if necessary. I have added red pepper flakes if I want more punch.
* I use a lot of garlic infused olive oil around here. Separate and peel one head of garlic. Put in sauce pan and cover with about 2 cups of extra virgin olive oil. Simmer for 15-30 minutes at around 200-210 degrees. If the garlic starts to fry or brown, remove from heat for a few minutes to cool down and then return to burner. The longer you simmer the oil, the stronger the garlic flavor will be…so keep an eye on the pot. Cool and remove the garlic cloves. Store in an airtight bottle and use within two weeks.
Herb Salmon with Red Onion, Bell Peppers and Tomatoes…
One of my husband’s favorite fish dishes is this salmon with bell peppers, red onions, tomatoes and herb butter. I have made the compound butter with chives, basil and thyme. All are good! My friend and I have a running joke that we serve it on “Salmon Monday” to start the week off on a healthy note…but really, you can have “Salmon Saturday” or any day!
1 green bell pepper, chopped in chunks
1/2 large red onion, chopped in chunks
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
2 garlic cloves, minced
For the compound butter: mix 2 tablespoon softened butter with 2 tablespoon of the herb of choice
Heat oven to 400 degrees
Put veggies in an appropriate sized baking dish with a drizzle of olive oil, salt and pepper
Bake for 45 minutes or until almost roasted
Spread butter on each piece of salmon
Add salt and pepper and rest on top of the vegetables
Cook for 15 minutes or until salmon is cooked completely
A big part of our life revolves around our little slice of heaven. We bought the place when our kids were old enough to appreciate the special offerings “land in the middle of nowhere” could offer. Life moves at a slower pace and meals are hearty and imaginative. The closest market is thirty minutes away, which is great in a pinch, but we usually don’t want to leave once we arrive. So, I stock up with menu items and as the days go buy the meals get more and more creative using what ever is left. We have come up with some real interesting dishes only proving the old saying that “necessity is the mother of invention”.
A big part of life at the ranch is the animals. We have cows, two burros and have named them all. When we first got the place, our daughter was the official “namer” (we still have the list) and these guys have become family. The reality of what can happen with these animals was tough to learn at times and forced us to accept a way of thinking that was not part of our “regular” life. You make them your pets, but realize how exposed and vulnerable they are when something happens that a quick trip to the vet can’t fix. One such situation presented itself when we arrived late one night and found one of the female cows laying in the side of our road. Since it was calving season, we assumed she was in the process of giving birth. My husband went to sleep with a shot gun next to the bed just in case we heard coyotes during the night. Sure enough, around three in the morning, the howling started but where it was coming from, we just couldn’t tell. We jumped out of bed and my husband went running down the driveway , shot gun in hand, to protect both mother and baby. Thankfully, there were no coyotes and the mama cow was still laying down with no baby, or so we thought. As my husband was walking back towards the house, he heard a weak moo. After searching around with flashlights, we found a little baby nestled in the grass. We carried him up the hill and putting him in the dog run until we could figure out what to do. The next morning, the vet came out and explained that the mama had severed a nerve on her left side as she was giving birth and was there nothing to be done for her…she was paralyzed. With tears in our eyes, we talked to her as she was put to sleep.
But we now had an adorable male calf that needed to be mothered. In keeping with the family tradition, we needed to name him and Lucky seemed the perfect choice. With help from a local gal, we fed him, chased him around for exercise and eventually weened him.
Lucky is still with us, weighing in at around 900 pounds. He moos when you call him and still loves to have his head scratched. He has become our pet and will never end up on the dinner plate.
Can’t forget Buzz and Faye…
