Smithy

I have been looking and looking for that darned recipe, without remembering whose food blog it was in! With that clue, I found the recipe for your Green Goddess Dressing, tucked away in the RecipeGullet archives. I'm also enjoying a pleasant walk down memory lane, reviewing your foodblog. Which brings me to the next, painful thought: back when you did that foodblog, I stlll had tarragon in my garden. I had a very happy tarragon plant that I'd gotten for 5 bucks from a friend at the local farmer's market. She'd commented that she was selling it cheaply because nobody in our area seemed to know what it was good for. What good fortune for me! I took it home, planted it and watched it flourish for years...until my best friend's son came to stay with us one summer. He promised not to mow too closely around our deck pillars, where mint, chives and tarragon grew. He mowed down the tarragon. When I took him to task for it, he said "but I didn't know they were all different". This was 9 years ago, and he's grown into a delightful young man, but that memory still pains me. I've never gotten tarragon to grow around there since. Okay, back to David Chang's ranch dressing... well, actually, I haven't tried that one but it would be interesting to do a taste test comparing my fave, from the Buttermilk and Bourbon Cookbook. I'll post about that in another topic.

That worked! I got about 1-1/2 quarts of prickly pear juice from that process, and have been enjoying it. I am a bit surprised at the flavor. I expected something quite tart, but this is more like a caramelized honey flavor. It has a slightly bitter note -- burnt caramel? Diluting with ice; adding a touch of lemon juice; mixing with tonic water (we have no sparkling water as @FauxPas suggested) have all been pretty good. The unexpected flavor may have to do with the age of the fruit, as FauxPas suggested, or with my processing method. I attended a session on harvesting and processing Sonoran desert foods, including prickly pears, last weekend. Without going into too much detail here, I'll note that Sarah Lee-Allen, the presenter, said that the fruit must be frozen solid to get juice from it. My freezer probably didn't do enough of a job to break the cell structure of the fruit. The other thing she said was that in taste tests - comparing the freezer method to simply pureeing the fruit and straining it - the pureed and strained fruit had a brighter, fresher taste. I think she wasn't a fan of steaming because it was too likely to cook the fruit and ruin some of the high flavor notes. How would the rest of you describe prickly pear juice? Did I miss out on some tartness, or is it not part of the flavor profile?

The final dish was a beautiful, deceptively simple dessert: Passionfruit Panna Cotta with Lemon and Raspberry Meringues, Oat Crumble, and Flowers. Beautiful, isn't it? The panna cotta was made with passionfruit puree. He noted that if fresh passionfruit is used it needs to be heated to deactivate the enzyme that prevents gelling; commercially prepared frozen passionfruit puree has probably been heat-pasteurized so the enzyme will already be deactivated. I've never made panna cotta before, although I've heard about it for years. His instructions were clear enough that I think I'm going to try a version of this for dessert at one of our winter feasts. Gelatin in cold water; heavy cream and granulated sugar heated enough to dissolve the sugar, then cooled before adding the gelatin; passionfruit puree added; the lot poured into molds to set. The base of the dessert was made from an oat crumble that he'd baked and allowed to cool while the panna cotta was being made. He put plastic wrap, held with a rubber band, at the bottom of each panna cotta mold, then sprinkled enough oat crumble into the ring to cover the bottom. When the panna cotta was ready, he poured about half of the panna cotta into each mold, enough to anchor the crumble, and let that start to set. Then he poured the rest of the panna cotta in and set it to chill and fully set. To unmold, he removed the plastic and rubber band, set the ring on a plate, then gently warmed it, using a small torch, so the mold would release. So here's the "deceptively easy" part, and the part I doubt I'll realistically do: he had already piped miniature lemon meringues and raspberry meringues to use as decorations. Each panna cotta got 2 of each of those meringues. The raspberry was sweet and tart; the lemon was tart and sweet; the panna cotta was creamy and sweet; the fresh raspberry garnish set it all off. It was lovely. It was a perfect ending to a delightful class. Here, to conclude my writeup about the class, I'll turn around and show you a bit of the goodies from The Blue Heron Trading Company. This is the sort of stuff we perused during break time. There's a discount for class-takers on the evening of any given class. I expect they do good business! They always get extra money from me. I do not have a business affiliation with either The Blue Heron Trading Company or The New Scenic Cafe, but I think they're both wonderful places. If you're ever in Duluth, Minnesota, I recommend you check them out.

Warmed Black Mission Figs in Browned Butter Maple Sauce, with Danish Blue Cheese, Sage and Ciabatta The penultimate dish was one Scott says is a perennial favorite at the restaurant, to the point that people are disappointed when they can't get it. "We drove all the way up from The Cities for this!" they cry, and he has to disappoint them by pointing out that the figs simply aren't available then. Only fresh black mission figs will do, and when they aren't in season, they simply aren't in season. Here's the initial setup, although the carrots and the aji amarilla sauce near the right weren't part of this dish. The butter maple sauce was made by melting butter over medium heat, stirring frequently to keep it from burning, until the solids began to turn a light- to medium-brown color, then turning off the heat. After the butter was allowed to cool slightly, maple syrup was added: 1-1/4 cup maple syrup for 1 cup butter. He whisked it together, brought it to a boil, then took it off the heat. Some of the sauce was then used to warm the figs (quartered or cut smaller, depending on their size) and some toasted walnuts. The figs were simply warmed, not cooked, in this sauce. To plate, he put a wedge of cheese in the center, surrounded it with carefully-spooned figs and walnuts, and poured more sauce over the top. The garnish was a few sage leaves, and the accompaniment was slices of warm ciabatta. There had been oohs and ahs of anticipation over this dish. It was clear that several members of the class had had this at the restaurant and were eagerly awaiting it. A few of us were outliers, though. One woman, when prodded for a response, said, "I thought it would be more special!' to general laughter and a few groans. I must admit that this was my least-favorite dish. I'm not a big fan of blue (or bleu) cheese, and to my tastes the strong cheese didn't necessarily play well with the very-sweet figs and sauce. For that matter, I'm not a big fan of figs or maple syrup either. That said, the maply buttery sauce with the toasted walnuts was excellent. I'll probably look for other applications of that sauce. The sage was a lovely addition.

I just realized that Thanksgiving is coming up fast, and Scott's class on a "New Scenic Feast" was in September! I'd better get this finished up so y'all can see the rest of his ideas. Peruvian Ceviche used the basic approach to ceviche, but added elements that he said were more typical of Peru than of Mexico. I'll get to those elements in a moment. For the ceviche, it's a fairly standard acid / salt / sugar cure (I admit I generally don't use sugar in mine, but I may in the future). He used scallops in this dish, and was emphatic that dry-packed scallops are the way to go. I don't think I've ever seen them in Duluth, but he noted that you can get anything ("anything!" he emphasized, with a wry grin) from Amazon. The Peruvian elements were fingerling sweet potatoes roasted in olive oil with a bit of salt and pepper; aji amarillo, and maiz chulpa. Sweet red onion slivers and bitter baby greens finished the dish. I forget what drink he paired with this; it might have been his "Switchell" which was apple cider based. I didn't take good notes on it. It had something sweet - maple syrup? - and something carbonated - ginger ale? - sorry I don't remember more. It was tasty, but I was more interested in the food and he didn't include drink recipes. Two ingredients were brand-new to me, and specifically Peruvian. The maiz chulpa is a toasted, crunchy, dried large-kernel corn. The nearest equivalent familiar to most of us in the USA would be Corn Nuts, but since I don't like them and I did like these, they can't possibly be similar. (Don't confuse me with the idea that I should maybe try something again after 30 years! ) They weren't as tough as I remember Corn Nuts, but they added a nice crunch. The aji amarillo was a smooth sauce made from yellow bell peppers that had been roasted/blistered, then peeled, seeded and chopped. They were blended with green onions, mayonnaise, sour cream, queso fresco, ketchup, lime juice, a touch of salt, and aji paste. What's aji paste, you may ask? Well, it's that other Peruvian ingredient. It's a paste made from aji amarillo chiles, and it's hot. It adds a nice kick. He said that it's a bit reckless to try eating it straight. I didn't get the chance to try that yet, but I certainly enjoyed the finished dish. And yes, you can get the maiz chulpa and the aji amarillo paste on Amazon, and yes, of course I did. Actually, I got the slightly narrower maiz cancha. According to this article, they're both toasted Peruvian corn, just a slight different variety.

Well, I hardly needed it, given my recent acquisition of Sister Pie !

Huh. I too am a Prime member, but the Betty Crocker book comes up as $9.99 for me in Kindle. Saved me some temptation, anyway.

I know you've posted this trick before, but it bears reiteration anyway. I think it's a great idea.

That looks delightful, Kim! You sent me down a rabbit hole looking for the recipe(s). For those who also would like to know more about them, here is a link to @Lisa2k's original post. In a later post, she notes that the actual recipe is in her blog, linked in her signature. Ah, here it is.

Speaking as a host, I think the best thing we can do to stay true to the original intent of this foodblog (documenting the acquisition and sharing of food during a time of short supply and stress) is to simply...wait...and stop with the political speculation. It's difficult, I know. We're all worried about her. But even with the more relaxed rules that apply to food blogs, this has strayed far from food.

Thanks for that! I borrowed the book from the library last fall, liked it very much but never had time to cook from it. It'll be nice to have a mobile copy, now that I'm on the road and running at a somewhat slower pace.

The pie is beautiful, and the pie dish is a real find! It looks as though you baked the pie directly in the dish. Did you use the cover for any of that? I can see how that might help control browning and crispness. Whether that would be good or bad is another question.

I had forgotten that "lay low" aspect of @Panaderia Canadiense's position. Thanks for the reminder. If she's reading, she's going to see a whole lot of hopes for the best for her - including mine.

Please do that ravioli, and post about it! It would be an additional incentive for me to get cracking on ravioli-making again. There's no access to crab for us, though. Well, maybe I could find some at a grocery store, which is where we got our asparagus.

Although we got the camp stove working, I opted to use the kitchen last night for its better light and the need to stage multiple ingredients. I used the last of our smoked salmon from Northern Waters Smokehaus at home, and several other items that needed using up, to make one of our favorites: smoked salmon alfredo. It's almost a one-pot dish, although if you count the pasta-boiling pot it really takes two. Salt and pepper and extra grated cheese, as we wished, were added after the photos. This time, I did not dump half the contents of my salt grinder into my serving. This was the view from our deck before I started cooking. If you look very carefully, you can see Venus framed by the branch circle in the middle of the photo, and Jupiter higher and to the left. Saturn is out of the frame, but about the same distance in line with the others. It's as fine an illustration of the plane of the ecliptic as I can imagine.

Pistachios? Almonds? Walnuts would certainly work.

OK, so after a day of weighted pressing I haven't got much juice out of the frozen, now thawed, tunas. Should I squeeze harder? (I don't know what I can do, if so.) Should I refreeze and rethaw, on the possibility of more cell breakdown? Or should I steam in the Instant Pot? Or pressure cook in the IP? Or boil, or, or, ...?

That's possible. The article said that the fruit will disappear into mush if it is soft-ripe. I wonder about the astingency in typical Hachiyas if they aren't dead-ripe, but the article says either will work. I guess we'll all just have to try it, won't we?

Since the Hachiyas need to be cooked anyway, do you think you'd prefer them to the Fuyus in this torte?

@kayb, thanks! Did you substitute some of the fruit puree for some of the milk?

I bet persimmon puree and walnuts would do well in that. Is it a recipe you'd care to post?

Last night should have been cooking outside. We had thawed some of his favorite "superburgers" -- half hot Italian sausage, half beef, with a generous amount of chopped sweet onion thrown into the mix. There's a fair amount of fat in them, so we try to do them outside where there won't be so much spatter. We do them in a pan so as not to lose the fat to the fire. It was not to be. Couldn't get the camp stove to light. There's plenty of fuel, and plenty of pressure, so our best guess is a problem in the burner somewhere. We'll try troubleshooting later. Maybe compressed air through the tubing will clear it? In the meantime, I cooked it atop the stove in the Princessmobile, with a spatter guard to contain the mess. The corn was a package of smoked corn my DIL did last fall. That's gooood stuff. He put his burger into a sandwich, but I didn't bother with a picture. I ate my burger patty with dabs of mayonnaise and mustard. Not very photogenic, but oh, so tasty. Edited to add: we just tried the campstove again, and it lit and ran without trouble. Go figure.

The next dish was the Caramelized Carrot Salad with béarnaise, thyme, and bitter & sour greens. "How many of you think a salad has to involve lettuce or some other green vegetable?" he asked, and went on to say that most people do...but that there are plenty of other ways to consider what constitutes a salad, and that other preparations can be made in advance to better effect. As he chatted, he used a vegetable peeler to slice large carrots into long planks. I didn't get a shot of that part, for some reason. The planks were thick enough to hold together, thin enough to bend; maybe 1/8" thick. Then he rolled them into a tight coil, overlapping each plank with the next by an inch or two, and tied them with twine to keep the coils together before they were cooked. This is the best shot I could get of that stage; it's extracted from an overhead mirror shot. He turned the heat on to medium-high heat and added what looked like 2 pounds of butter, along with an equal quantity of olive oil, to a pan. He laughed at our gasps at the quantity of butter. "None of you is a vegan, I hope!" he grinned. Someone commented on the cholesterol, I think, and he quipped that "if you come to my restaurant, you'll eat well. You can worry about dieting some other time!" The fat needs to be deep enough to baste the carrot "steaks" while they're caramelizing on the bottom. After they were caramelized on the bottom, he flipped them and added garlic and thyme to the pan. The basting continued until the carrot "steaks" were fork-tender. At this point the garlic, carrot steaks and thyme were removed from the butter/oil combination. The fat could be used for another purpose. The thyme was discarded. All this work, he noted, could be done a day or three in advance, and then the final steps done the day of the feast. The beauty of this kind of salad is that it keeps well. How well does a green salad keep, if it's done days in advance? For service, the steaks and garlic cloves went into a 400F oven to roast for 7 - 10 minutes. After that the twine was removed and the garnishing / plating began. He put béarnaise sauce on each plate, then put a carrot steak and several garlic cloves atop the sauce. The garnish was a small bouquet of the baby sour greens he used for nearly everything: the greens were baby arugula, sorrel, and other greens I've forgotten. This dish was brilliant enough that I bought a new sharp vegetable peeler ("they're 5 bucks on Amazon," he noted, but I bought one that night at the Blue Heron for a couple bucks more than that) to try making this at Thanksgiving. If it goes well, I'll do it again at Christmas.

First up: steelhead tartare with saffron aioli, roe and sourdough rye bread. The sourdough rye bread is from The New Scenic Cafe and was not part of the recipe batch. The roe came from a local (Lake Superior) fishery, but I apparently didn't write down the fish. Whitefish, I think. This is one of the things I'd like to pick up from the restaurant sometime if possible. You can just see it peeking out from under the baby bitter greens that he used as garnish. The steelhead tartare was diced finely, then combined with olive, sesame and white truffle oils, minced shallot and garlic, dried thyme, chopped chives, and a touch of salt and pepper. ("Would any of you make this?" he asked as we eagerly ate the samples passed out to each of us. Heck yes, we would!) The saffron aioli had a beautiful color, as you can see, and the delicate note of saffron added to it. His instructions are clear and careful. He provided mixed drinks to go with each dish as a companion, but cautioned us sometimes to go easy because one drink had to go with two dishes. None of them was alcoholic. He laughed when someone asked if that was typical for the restaurant. "Oh no," he said, "we serve alcohol there." These drinks were good without the alcohol. (In past classes there has been wine available; of four classes I took this fall, none offered wine. Rules must have changed.) My drink notes are, unfortunately, sketchy even though no alcohol was involved. This first drink I documented, however; it was called a Bloody Swede. Strained Bloody Mary mix; pickled beet juice; ice; garnishes of dill, lemon and a dill pickle spear. At the restaurant the drink would also include aquavit. It was delicious! The tart flavors played nicely off the steelhead tartare and its accompaniments. I loved the way the pickle picked up the beet juice stain. I wanted to snatch away the uneaten pickle spears from some of my classmates, but restrained myself.

One of my favorite stores in the Duluth, MN area is The Blue Heron Trading Company. One of my favorite restaurants in the area is The New Scenic Cafe. Therefore, when the Blue Heron offers a cooking class taught by Scott Graden, chef and owner of the New Scenic, that class is not to be missed. Most classes fill up within a day of being announced; Scott's classes typically fill on the very day of announcement. I was lucky enough to get wait-listed and fill in on a cancellation. I've taken a class or two of Scott's before. He is funny, interesting and creative, and he engages well with his small audience. His classes are clearly taught, with recipes, and they always seem accessible in the sense that those of us attending the class can do the same thing. As a bonus, he always makes it clear that small quantities of things not readily available to the home cook can be gotten "from the back door" of the restaurant if we come and ask: a little butter, some herring roe, sourdough starter. (Just don't ask for too much, or do it too often!) I've never tried it but if I'd had time before we left for the winter I'd have done so. This September's class was titled "New Scenic Feast" and one of its main points was to show that a fine and elaborate feast can be prepared in advance for a large or small gathering, to minimize fuss on the day of the holiday. You can enjoy the wine (beer, whatever) with your guests instead of tearing around like a crazy person and missing the fun. Much of the menu he presented was something that he and his staff had prepared for 300 guests at a festival the following weekend. Instead of making this a single long post as I am prone to do, I'm going to post in stages. It will help me clarify my memories, and give readers a chance to comment or ask questions as we go along. Here are some teaser photos, starting with the menu. Scott Graden, in the Blue Heron's classoom kitchen: One of the drinks he provided to pair with an appetizer: