Published by mel on September 9, 2008 in entree, recipe and sides & bites.
I’ve long proclaimed my love of farro. I especially love its chewy texture and the way it absorbs flavors while still maintaining its own subtle nutty taste. A perfect grain for make-ahead salads.
As I was leafing through the latest Food & Wine magazine this weekend, I spied a recipe for a prosciutto cafilulower farro salad and immediately bookmarked it. I bookmark a lot of recipes on websites, in magazine, in cookbooks. I email them to myself and print them out, but never seem to get around to making them. Mostly they sit in my Inbox, or get sandwiched between my cookbooks for months. So, I think this might be a record for me. Bookmarked on Sunday, eating by Tuesday…It looked that good.
But as with every recipe, I couldn’t leave it alone. In fact, I swapped some of the ingredients and left most of them out. They just didn’t seem necessary. Instead of cubed prosciutto (cubed prosciutto is wrong - very, very wrong), I used bacon. Really good Niman Ranch Applewood smoked bacon. I love the sweet smokiness it added to the salad and it played very well with the cauliflower. I also added some arugula because a salad needs its greens, and some lemon juice to brighten it up.
I had this salad for lunch and absolutely love it as main dish. It’s rich and hearty, but still feels light and healthy. How can it be? I don’t know. It just is.
Update: Added pecans to this, which made it even better.
Continue reading ‘farro salad w/bacon & cauliflower’
Published by mel on May 16, 2008 in entree and recipe.
Every Friday night is pizza night at my house. I make the dough in the morning and it rises patiently on my counter top while I work. My husband gets home first, so he preheats the oven and the pizza stone and gives the dough a bit of a knead for it’s second rising (um, it’s not as dramatic as it sounds).
Then we eat our pizza in front of the TV with ice-cold I.P.A. in our frosty, fancy monogrammed beer mugs. After dinner, I usually fall asleep on the couch before 10, all the while pretending that I’m still awake while Tom tries to switch the channel to a movie I’d never in a million years watch with him. It’s a nice tradition.
A few months ago, I decided it was time to break tradition and branch out into the world of calzones. I stuffed them with ricotta, Parmesan, basil and toasted pine nuts. Having faced previous disasters with dumplings, raviolis and empanadas, I was very careful not to over-stuff. I waited patiently while the baked. Then I finally took a big bite, expecting a beautiful, creamy filling surrounded by a thin, crisp crust. Wrong. All I got was bread. And the filling? I could barely taste it. So bland.
The moral of the story is this: Fill the crap out of your calzone. And fill it with big, bold flavors. None of this subtle ricotta and toasted pine nuts. So I tried again with Portuguese Chourico (duh), sun-dried tomatoes, onions, arugula and semi-soft sheep’s milk cheese. Now that was a calzone worth posting. Spicy, rich, meaty and you could definitely taste the filling. It’s a calzone mighty enough to break tradition and delicious enough to make again and again.
Continue reading ‘pizza pie! how to make a tasty calzone.’
Published by mel on February 1, 2008 in entree and recipe.
I’m still in love with my Crisper. I especially love crisping polenta with cheese on it to make “fries” or as an alternative to starchy sides. If I want to crisp my polenta (instead of making the creamy, mashed-potato kind), I use the store-bought version that comes in a tube, which I’ll either slice into rounds like I did in this recipe or cut into smaller fry-like sticks. Both are equally delicious. The fries go best with fried eggs, sandwiches or a big bowl of homemade chili. The rounds are tastiest when topped with yummy goodness. In this case, caramelized onions and sausage with heirloom tomatoes and arugula. The whole thing came together in about 30 minutes. It was cheesy and spicy, sweet and salty and had a great textural contrast.
Continue reading ’sausage and cheesy polenta rounds’
Published by mel on January 25, 2008 in entree and recipe.
I like salads that are room temperature, or even a little warm because you can actually taste the ingredients. There’s nothing more unappealing to me than a pre-made, super refrigerated salad from a deli or grocery store. Tomatoes are especially gross when they’re really cold. Not that there are any tomatoes in this salad - I’m just saying…
Anyway, I made a salad last night with freshly roasted butternut squash, which is rather annoying to prepare from a whole squash and so I will be using the frozen cubed kind from Whole Foods from now on. I also crisped up my prosciutto by broiling it in the oven. (I know you’re not supposed to heat/cook prosciutto, but it wasn’t the fancy expensive kind and I wanted something closer to the consistency of bacon.) I used both Arugula and Watercress (for peppery-ness), feta cheese (for tang) and pumpkin seeds (for crunch) then tossed everything in a citrusy Dijon vinaigrette.
I’ve used quite a bit of parentheses in this post, and I’ll try to refrain from doing so in the future (promise).
Continue reading ‘butternut squash & crispy prosciutto salad’
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