mmm...burrata!

I LOVE burrata!!! (and I don't think I'm alone)

And I really love this burrata from Gioia Cheese Co in Los Angeles...

It is sold in one pound containers so, depending on how many people I am cooking for I often end up with a bit left over...such a problem to have!

I think I may have found my new favorite way to use it up...

...the other night I made myself this simple pasta...I was looking in the fridge for some parmesan to grate over the top when I noticed that container of burrata...oh joy!  I simply alternated spoonfuls of the pasta and bits of the burrata...

...some of the cheese melted into the sauce, the rest stretched into long gooey strands...as good as any lasagna and it can be made in the time it takes the pasta water to boil...

...building a base flavor for the sauce...

...absolutely perfect dry farmed early girl tomatoes...so concentrated in flavor...

...excellent quality pasta...

...don't skimp on the basil (and no need for chopping)...

...the finished sauce...

what's so wrong with simple?

I saw a post on facebook today about this "great" new product meant to save time and space in your tiny kitchen...

Here is the immediate vision that popped into my head when I saw it...and I would predict the same level of frustration in using either...(maybe the designers sensed this as well, after all they did decide to leave the tomatoes on the vine)...Oh, and the CLEANUP TIME!

photoshoot with Relic Wines and serendipitous timing...

A while back I did a photo shoot with the fine folks at Relic Wines.  


I first met Mike Hirby and Shatzi Throckmorton (the proprietors of the winery) when we had the chance to collaborate on a winemaker dinner for one of my clients a couple years ago. 


Recently they were looking to update their website with new images and I was looking for subjects to shoot.  We decided to make a trade...I would provide them with the images and they would provide me with their wine.  If you have had their wine (and if not you NEED to) you will realize that I made out on the deal!


Soon after the shoot they were contacted by Wine Spectator who indicated they were working on a piece about Rhône style wines and asked if they had a photo of Mike (the winemaker)...great timing, indeed.


Here is the shot that ran with the article in the March issue. 

You can see a few of the other shots I took on their website here.  And here is a shot of Schatzi from the same day...

My first on page photo credit! (albeit dwarfed by peppercorns)

nowhere to hide

When you put just a few ingredients on a plate they better be good...

This is a dish that is a work-in-progress and will likely take many forms this spring but is based firmly on my favorite new-to-me ingredient.  A couple of weeks ago at the farmers market I decided to try this clabbered cottage cheese from the great cowgirl creamery.  WOW!  (mind you, I haven't eaten cottage cheese since I was a toddler)

It cannot get much simpler...I just roasted the asparagus in olive oil and topped it with a mixture of the cottage cheese, great olive oil (this one from soul food farms...yum!), a chiffonade of sorrel and some fresh ground pepper.  There was already enough salt in the cheese.  Sorrel can be hard to find, but if you plant it in your garden it is hard to make it NOT grow...and I love the vibrant lemony zing it provides!


Fava beans are just about here, so I'm thinking a few of those and a sprinkling of some crisp-ity chruch-ity sourdough breadcrumbs will send this one over the top.

winter in four parts...

... celery root soup, crisp pancetta, fried sage ...

  

... little gem salad, beets, tangerines, mint, toasted pepitas ...

... crisp duck confit, du puy lentils, braised savoy cabbage, black pepper gastrique ...

... olive oil/almond/citrus cake, crème fraîche, candied mandarinquats ...

contrast

I really do love cooking in the cold weather months...braising, roasting, caramelizing, slow long cooking...


But as individual dishes need contrast, so too does the meal...


This salad was the perfect way to refresh the taste buds between a bowl of creamy, warm celery root soup and a plate of crispy duck confit with lentils and cabbage.  Most often I would write a menu that progresses from salad to soup to main course, but I didn't want to go back-to-back with two fairly rich dishes. 

The crunchy, salty roasted pepitas made for a nice contrast both in texture and flavor within the dish itself.


Every ingredient in this salad was excellent, but the show stopper was without a doubt these tangerines!  Firm and sweet, but with great acid.

... the gems ...

I removed the larger leaves from the outside and relegated them to sandwich duty.  I like the inner light green/yellow leaves for this salad. 

... the toasted pepitas ...

A key ingredient in the Mexican dish mole, these are great on their own.  I always buy nuts and seeds raw and toast them myself.  Put them in a dry sauté pan and roast them in a 400 degree oven until they are slightly crunchy and take on a little color.  As with all nuts/seeds, a little color means flavor, a little too much color means bitter.  Hit them with a bit of good olive oil and kosher salt when they come out of the oven...delicious.  Make sure you toast some extra because they are great snacking on their own.

... the beets ...

These great beets were simply roasted in a hot oven with olive oil, a little water, salt and pepper (covered)...then peeled, cut into wedges and tossed with their own vinaigrette.

... the mint ...

feel free to use a lot in this salad...and whole leaves are great!

... the tangerines ...

Oh...my...the...tangerines!  You can cut them into segments or "supremes", but I like to first cut off pieces of the fruit almost like you would cutting around the core of an apple.  From there, I just cut slices against the direction of the membrane that separates each section...you can see what I mean if you look at the slices of tangerine in the salad above.  I like the way it looks and the way it eats.  For larger citrus like grapefruits I tend to cut out the individual segments.

... the vinaigrettes ...

I hadn't planned on using two different vinaigrettes for one salad, but I happened to have some blood oranges on hand.  I made a meyer lemon vinaigrette for the salad, and dressed the beets separately in a blood orange vinaigrette.

my first PORCHETTA...

So I usually don't like to type anything in all caps {it's like yelling}, but in this case I felt it was warranted...PORCHETTA!!!    (so there you are...bold, underlined, italicized and all caps...can you tell I'm happy with the way this turned out?)

It is something I have always wanted to make, but most of the time I am cooking for groups of about 8-10 people.  Since a traditional porchetta is made using a whole pig it would have been a bit much.

I have also seen versions that wrap a pork belly around a couple of boneless pork loins which I think is a nice idea...but still quite a large roast.

Recently I found a blog while I was researching various ways of cooking prime rib and stumbled on this post for an all-belly porchetta...now we're talkin'.  There's a lot of great detail there, so I won't repeat, but just give some of my observations now that I have made it for myself (and some friends)... 

Here is mine all tied up and ready to go.  I seasoned and tied it 2 days prior to cooking.  He said to tie the roast starting on the outside, working in.  I would have been inclined to do the opposite, but he was right...just look at how uniform it turned out!  I did change the seasonings from his version.  For years I have used a mixture of spices based on a braised pork belly recipe from the  Café Boulud Cookbook.  My mix is as follows: fennel, coriander, cumin, peppercorns, bay leaf, cinnamon, allspice, star anise, cloves, dried chiles & garlic.  Oh, and salt, plenty of salt.  While that seems like a lot of flavors going on, they really do mellow out over the long slow cooking (and it's fun listening to people trying to guess what the spices are).

On day 2 I followed his advice of rubbing the skin with a mixture of salt and baking soda.  As he explains this changes the PH of the meat/skin which allows it to get very VERY crispy.

Another step from his method is to blast it at 500 degrees at the end to crispy it up.  The roast already seemed very crisp so I decided to skip that step.  It turned out that while the skin was crispy it wasn't the right kind of crispy and was frankly difficult to eat.  Because I had cut the roast in 2 (it was otherwise too long) I decided to give the second half that blast to finish it off.  That was the ticket...the right kind of crispy...it literally shatters when you bite it!

This is the first half and, although it was delicious, everyone unanimously pushed the skin to the side of their plates.  When the second half of the roast was finished everyone was breaking off pieces of the crispy skin with ooohs and aaahs!

{there is no picture of the second half as it was devoured so quickly!}

While this dish does take some time and patience, I highly recommend giving it a try.  Pork belly really is a cheap cut of meat and is loaded with flavor.

a client photo shoot

A client of mine recently asked if I would provide food for a photo shoot he was doing to update the website for his property.  You can see this amazing property at his website.


I had cooked at the Ranch multiple times in the past and had a pretty good idea what he was looking for.  Since I knew the food would be a supporting character to the architecture shoot, I decided to go for large shapes and big splashes of color.  The shoot was in late May and the markets were just brimming with color!


Here is the great kitchen in the main house...

The covered patio that leads out to the pool area...

Have a seat, lunch is served!

The photography was done by the uber talented, crazy cool and ridiculously calm Cesar Rubio...go take a look at his gorgeous work.

He was so great about letting me hang out for the day (after my part was done), ask questions, and even help out a bit with the shoot.  I definitely have a new appreciation for architecture photography!

summer's here and the time is right...

Berries are one of the many great things about Summer!  And here is my take on a classic dessert...summer berry pudding.

Most recipes call for cooking the fruit or some of the fruit.  I like to skip the cooking so that I can keep the flavor of the berries as fresh and lively as possible.

Here, I've cut up the strawberries and added them to the blueberries, blackberries and raspberries.  I then tossed them with some sugar, lemon juice and a few sprigs of fresh lemon verbena (fresh mint would work equally well).  The amount of each is basically up to you, but you do need enough sugar to help the berries release much of their juice and enough lemon juice to balance out that sweet.  Let the berries macerate for about an hour, stirring them up occasionally.  (remove the verbena before moving on)

Here I have cut most of the crust off some light and airy pain de mie, but I have also used brioche.  I would say the amount of the bread I added was about 3/4 the volume of the berries I had.  I suggest starting with about 1/2 the volume and stir it in every 5-10 minutes and really let the bread soak up the syrup created by the berries.  Add more bread as needed until the mixture is thick enough that it will hold together  (this part is tricky...it will all make more sense the second time you make this)

 Still soaking...

Here you can see how the mixture has changed.  The blackberries and raspberries break down and join the bread to become the mortar and the strawberries and blueberries act as the bricks.  I lined a loaf pan with plastic and pressed the mixture in tightly to make sure there were no air pockets.  I folded the plastic back over the top and weighted it down for a full day in the refrigerator.  I used a brick wrapped in tin foil...but you can use whatever happens to fit your pan. 

The next day, carefully pull out the plastic wrapped pudding.  Wrap it in an additional few layers of wrap.  The pudding is barely being held together by the bread, so the additional wrap will hold it together as you make slices.  A super sharp knife is a must...a long thin slicer being the best choice.  You can place the slice on a plate, then carefully remove the plastic and there you have it...I like mine with a dollop of just slightly sweetened and whipped crème fraîche!

Try this soon before all of the berries are gone...

Crazy for Citrus!!!

I've been buying citrus from Desantis Farms for years now but I guess I never really realized just how many varieties they grow (though I knew it was a lot!).  I asked Rosa Desantis how many they grow and even she did not know, so maybe it is more than a lot.

I was curious both as a chef and as a photographer, so my last trip to the market, I picked up two of everything they were selling that day.  The colors and the flavors are simply amazing!

Here are the 20 varieties I got that day (and it is but a fraction of what they sell...there will be other later ripening varieties in the weeks to come).  I had a hard time trying to decide on their arrangement, but finally put them in order of relative size, from kumquat all the way up to the mighty pomelo...

kumquat

These can be eaten as is, though it is an acquired taste...or one of those love-it-or-hate-it kind of ingredients (I'm firmly in the 'love' category).  It can be sliced thin to go into salads, but my favorite is to candy them in a light syrup.  I've used them this way with duck confit, foie gras and as a garnish to citrus based desserts.

limequat

This one has huge pucker factor and really does taste like a lime with more interesting flavors.  Personally, I would probably candy this one as well. 

mandarinquat

This might just be my favorite new-to-me discovery.  The flavor is all mandarine, but with a bracing acidity.  I think this could work sliced thin and sparingly in certain salads, but I think it would make an amazing marmalade!

rangpur lime

Looking at this, you could be fooled...it looks very sweet, like a mandarine, but it is definitely all lime.  It is super high in acid with a VERY unique flavor.

page mandarin

These are so great, not just because their flavor is amazing, but they are easy to peel and seedless...YUM!!

seville orange

This is the quintessential fruit for making marmalade.  It is very high in acid and has a bitter rind.  There are few culinary applications where 'bitter' is a desired trait, but marmalade is a key exception!

moro blood orange

That beautiful color is not the only reason to get some of these...they are also very tasty.  It's tough to compare this to anything else...not much acid...don't wear white!

satsuma mandarin

Another great fruit for simply peeling and eating.  This has a nice balance of sweetness and acidity, making it great for both savory and sweet applications.

pink lemon

Very much a lemon, but with a more floral flavor and aroma...beautiful color.

lemon

Not much to say...high acid, great lemon flavor...

meyer lemon

A cross of a lemon and a mandarin, this one has become very well known and hugely popular.  As a lemon it is unique in that it is low enough in acid to be eaten as-is.  I love it as a salad dressing, squeezed over some fish and it has so many uses for desserts!

sweet lime

The name pretty much says it all here.  It tastes just as you would imagine something called a 'sweet lime' to taste...I bet this would make a great sorbet!

bergamot

If you're an earl grey tea drinker, you'll be familiar with this one.  It is very tart with amazing aroma...cut off a little zest, bend it in half and squeeze...smells so good (and familiar)...

clemenvilla

WOW...this one gets 'best-in-show' for me!  It has a great mix of sweet to acid.  it is very much a large clementine in its flavor and appearance...sooooo delicious!

tarocco blood orange

This is one of my absolute favorites!  The flavor is very much like a cara cara orange, but somehow different.  The bonus with the tarocco is its amazing appearance...very summer-of-love tie-dyed kinda feel.

cara cara orange

This one used to be hard to find outside of the farmers market, now it can be found even in large chain grocery stores.  The color of the flesh is a bit navel orange meets pink grapefruit and the flavor is sweet with little acid...great for peeling and eating.

navel orange

You know this one...these are so sweet and great for peel-and-eat!

cocktail grapefruit

Though loaded with seeds, this has great flavor.  I would describe it as a cross (both in flavor & appearance) between a navel orange and a good white flesh grapefruit...this would be great for juice.

pink grapefruit

This one has a huge amount of acid...you've got to be a grapefruit fanatic for this one.  Though it looks like a 'ruby red' it is far from that sweet.

pomelo (melo gold)

This has a nice flavor, much closer to a ruby red grapefruit.  The flesh is very firm...you could almost cut it into dice and it would probably keep its shape.  As you can see there is a huge amount of pith, but the flavor is worth all of the trimming.

Well, I thought I knew my citrus varieties pretty well, but I'm really glad I went through this exercise.  I learned some new things and it's given me some great new ideas for my winter/spring menus!

Enjoy these while they are around and go visit Rosa & Mateo at the Marin Farmers Market on Thursdays and Sundays...