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Salad on a Stick

May 23, 2011 By lisa in Uncategorized Tags: appetizers, blue cheese dressing, events, family dinner, fast, salad on a stick, vegetables, wedge salad


by Lisa

With summer fair season coming up, and  barbecues and neighborly dinners, I thought this would be a good time to share our latest favorite thing: salad on a stick.  Another recipe straight out of last month’s Food and Wine, this one is endlessly adaptable, and it’s going to be a regular on our summer table. I served this first for dinner with the Pickled Shrimp, then brought another batch to book club. Both times it was a huge hit, probably because the only thing better than something on a stick is something on a stick with bacon. My kids would eat bacon everyday if they could.

The original recipe is a take on a classic wedge salad:  iceberg, bacon, blue cheese.  The technique is this: spear alternating bites of romaine lettuce and bacon onto a bamboo spear. Serve with homemade blue cheese dressing.  These disappear fast–neither kids nor adult can’t resist. The only note of caution: don’t overcook the bacon. It needs to be slightly tender so it doesn’t crumble on the spear.  I’ve learned to cook bacon in my oven:  put cold bacon on a foil lined try into a cold oven. Turn to 350 degrees and bake for 12-17 minutes, until ends start to curl and bacon reaches desired cripsness.

Not surprsingly, blue cheese is not a big hit with the kids. So they used ranch dressing instead of blue cheese.  But if you like blue cheese, try this recipe. It’s pretty great. Try it.

Also exciting: you can vary this recipe endlessly: use fresh Thousand Island dressing, cherry tomatoes, mini cucumber spears, green onions, mushrooms, peppers–anything you can put in a salad that you can spear is fair game for the skewer.  Plus: these spears keep and travel beautifully, and there’s no need for forks.

Imagine the possibilities:

  • romaine,+ provolone + pepperoni + pepperoccini+ red pepper + red wine vinaigrette=classic Italian-American antipasto on a stick
  • Cherry tomatoes + mini-mozzerella balls + fresh basil leaves + balsamic vinagrette=Caprese on a stick
  • Celery + carrot + romaine or iceberg leaves +  Thousand Island=crudite on a stick
  • Mozzarella +roasted red peppers + marinated artichokes
  • Tomato + Watermelon + feta + red wine vinagrette
  • shrimp + romaine + green goddess dressing

Blue Cheese Dressing Recipe is here.
We’d love to hear your ideas below! Happy grilling!

Buttermilk Weekend Waffles

May 20, 2011 By caroline in Uncategorized Tags: breakfast, restaurants

by Caroline

waffle-strawberry sunshine close-up

I was lucky to become a mom surrounded by a group of neighborhood friends who were also new moms, and before Ben turned one our frequent casual playdates and regular Monday playgroup generated a babysitting co-op that saved my family, at least, from paying for babysitting until Eli was a baby. These days, with the kids all in school, we don’t use the co-op much anymore, but we do a regular sleepover swap with one of the families which we all look forward to every month.

I’ve been realizing lately that part of what the kids love, aside from the big block of playtime with their friends, is the food. Their friends’ house always has a particular Kashi cereal that I can never remember to buy; their mom cooks chard somehow differently than I do (I need to ask her about it!), and Ben and Eli can’t get enough of it. Over here, their friends love my buttermilk waffles. In the morning, we’ve fallen into a good routine of cereal breakfast (which the kids serve themselves independently) followed, a couple hours later, by waffle breakfast. The recipe is nothing revolutionary — straight out of the Joy of Cooking — but it’s delicious and feeds a crowd of hungry, LEGO-building, spy-sneaking children.

Preheat your waffle iron.
Whisk together in a large bowl:
3 1/2 c all-purpose flour
2 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt

Whisk together in another large bowl:
6 eggs
1 1/2 sticks (12 tbsp) melted butter
3 c buttermilk

Whisk the wet ingredients into the dry and mix together with a few swift strokes. Spoon 1/2 cup of batter (or whatever is recommended by your waffle iron’s manufacturer) into the hot iron, close the lid and cook until golden brown. Repeat with remaining batter until the children are full. (Leftover waffles make excellent snacks.)

Pickled Shrimp

May 19, 2011 By lisa in Uncategorized Tags: appetizers, dinner, family dinner, fast, fish, pickled shrimp

By Lisa

It’s no secret to readers here that I’ve been in a bit of a cooking slump.  But as the weather changes, and my event schedule slows down a little, and the end of the school year approaching, things are getting a little jolt of renewed energy. I am still not over the loss of Gourmet, but I read the recent issue of Food and Wine with interest for the first time in months and months. And in it, I found this recipe for pickled shrimp, which called to me for some reason. I had a good bag of shrimp from Pietro, and all the ingredients, and took a deep breath, and made the new dish later that week.

However.

I forgot the part about it needing to chill for 8-10 hours, so I pulled together the Sundried Tomato Gnocchi, and we ate these shrimp the following night, as we watched Harry Potter, The Prisoner of Azkaban.  So, while I had to make 2 things one night, I had nothing to do the following night, which was Friday, and who doesn’t want a no-cook dinner on Friday night? Also, once the shrimp are cleaned and peeled, this comes together in minutes. It’s really fast.

So, for lots of reasons, including how they taste, these are one of the best new things I’ve made in a long time.  Ella liked them, Finn liked them less (a little too much heat) and they made the kitchen smell really delicious, tart and pickle-y. A lot like summer. I used a premade spinach dip, which sounds strange, but it cuts the heat, so I’d make sure to buy a good one or make the one in the recipe.  If there are any leftover, I’m sure they’d be great on Day 2. Or for a picnic. Or an appetizer.  However you use them, you won’t be sorry.


The recipe is here: Pickled Shrimp with Creamy Spinach Dip.

The Only Brownie Recipe You Will Ever Need

May 18, 2011 By caroline in Uncategorized Tags: baking, chocolate, dessert, recipes, sweets

by Caroline

Last summer, to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary, Tony and I arranged back to back sleepovers for our kids with two different families, and thus managed our first two-night getaway together since Ben was born. We’d each been away longer on our own (or with friends and family), both for work and for pleasure, but never just the two of us. So we drove to Calistoga with a pile of books and magazines and spent our time away sleeping, eating, and reading.

One of the books I read that weekend was Kate Moses’ richly-detailed, quietly moving memoir with recipes, Cakewalk. I read it very slowly, savoring her writing, not wanting it to end, and when it did end, I cried.

Cakewalk was in ways not the happiest choice for my anniversary reading. None of the many marriages she describes in the book are easy, whether she’s writing about her own parents or those of her teenage boyfriend, whose father mutters under his breath to Kate, in his wife’s presence, “Twenty-five years of that woman is enough to choke a horse.” It is in that chapter that Moses offers her brownie recipe, which, with its two versions, is perhaps a good example of how to thrive in a long relationship: stay flexible and always offer options.

One version of the recipe (the one that I prefer) was reprinted in the New York Times and I offer it here; you’ll have to buy the book to get the frosting-covered creamy brownie recipe.

1 1/2 cups unsalted butter, plus more for greasing pan

1 1/2 cups walnut halves (optional)

9 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped or broken into small pieces

3 large eggs

1 teaspoon salt

2 3/4 cups sugar

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour.

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 13-by-9-inch glass baking pan. If using walnuts, spread on a baking sheet and toast in oven until fragrant and lightly browned, 8 to 10 minutes. Let cool.

2. Melt butter in a small saucepan over low heat. Remove from heat, add chocolate, and cover pan until chocolate is melted, about 10 minutes. In a mixing bowl, whisk the eggs, salt, sugar and vanilla just until thick, creamy and beginning to lighten in color.

3. Whisk the butter and chocolate until smooth, then mix into the sugar-egg mixture just until well combined. Using a spatula, fold in the flour, using as few strokes as possible, until it disappears. Fold in the walnuts, if using. Spread the batter evenly in the baking pan.

4. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, checking after 22 minutes to avoid over-baking. When the tip of a knife inserted in the center comes out with moist crumbs, but not liquid, remove brownies from the oven. Allow to cool to room temperature, then cover and leave in the pan for several hours or overnight before cutting into squares. Store in an airtight container.

Salad “Nicoise” for Kids

May 16, 2011 By lisa in Uncategorized Tags: dinner, family dinner, fast, fish, nicoise for kids, salad, salad nicoise

by Lisa

This dinner began with a piece of albacore, which we eat with some regularity.  We can buy it fresh at our farmers market and it’s a favorite with everyone.  I’m not sure what sent me down the composed salad path, but it might have had something to do with the week of composed salads we ate after Easter and something to do with the fact that I’m tired of the Korean style tuna we’ve been eating–delicious as it is. And it definitely had something to do with the fact that Finn doesn’t often like his foods all mixed up. So if I can separate ingredients without trouble, sometimes I do. For this salad, I made this easy dressing with what I had on hand.  I didn’t have a lot of traditional Nicoise ingredients (potatoes, olives) but I had other things: a tender Boston bibb lettuce and some baby Romaine, hard boiled eggs, tomatoes, white beans, artichokes.  I did a quick pan sear of the tuna, roasted the baby artichokes, steamed the green beans. I topped the tuna with the dressing and set out the other ingredients out on the counter with the dressing.

Here’s the very best part: kids get to choose what goes on their plates.  I dressed each ingredient individually in the glass bowl, which is the traditional way to prepare a Nicoise in any case, and then set it on their plates.  Caroline & I are together on this: when you can give kids choice and control, that’s always a good thing. This was Finn’s custom plate: tuna, white beans, green beans, lettuce. He came back for seconds.  I think we also had some fresh bread.

The second best part: everything can stay at room temperature so it was ready to go for my husband and I later that evening. In one of those great moments when what makes the kids happy makes the grown up happy, we had a win/win kind of night. And: you can endlessly adapt this: substitute canned tuna or salmon, fresh snap peas or carrots….whatever you have on hand.

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