blue_dolphin

My haul from this week's farmers market. Sorry about the afternoon glare. Clockwise from top left: Eggs, spring onions, Easter radishes, fennel, black kale, cilantro, celery (very large, leafy celery!), Meyer lemons and cara cara oranges.

I'm not sure how you plan to use the Absinthe but most of the cocktails I've made with it just use it as a rinse so you might want to go really small with that one. My local Total Wine has 50 ml and 100 ml bottles available. That might free up enough $ for another bottle. I'd want to add a rye (Rittenhouse is affordable and good for cocktails) and/or bourbon and a sweet vermouth (you can go with a 375 here) to your collection. Tequila is also missing but I'm not sure if you are interested in that or not.

I peel the onions and slice them about 1/4 inch thick. Separate the rings; then toss them with olive oil (~ 1.5 - 2T oil per lb of onions), salt & pepper and transfer to an oiled oven-safe dish. Cover with the dish with foil and bake for 30 minutes @ 375°F. Remove the foil, give the onions a stir, cover, and return the dish to the oven for 15 minutes. Stir again and return to the oven, uncovered, stirring every 10-15 min until the onions are done to your taste. This is a modification of a Deborah Madison recipe for Roasted Onions with Sage from her cookbook, The Savory Way. That recipe adds fresh sage leaves and balsamic vinegar to the mix and I tend to cut those onions thicker ~ 1/2" thick. I often put 2 pans of onions into the oven at the same time - one with the seasonings and the other plain.

I also tried that recipe for caramelized onions. I think I posted about it over in the Instant Pot topic but never added it here. I ended up with a large amount of liquid after the pressure cooking step and it took such a long period of stirring on the Sauté function (almost 40 minutes) that the onions had pretty much turned into a paste. I was disappointed as I'd been expecting onions, not onion purée and the claim of "caramelized onions in 30 minutes" turned out to be bogus in my hands. However, I froze it in ice cube trays and it was handy to thaw out a cube or two and get that great caramelized flavor in an instant. Smeared on a flatbread, sprinkled with grated cheese and broiled - yum! But it was an onion purée, not caramelized onions. I went back to my usual oven method for making actual caramelized onions.

A very good friend of mine gave me the recipe for her "top secret" family masala and it contains fenugreek - and 15 other ingredients. It is delicious!

It is a very tasty thing as is and will be fun to play with - maybe add some kalamata olives, or diced pear and brie, or little cubes of roasted squash and blue cheese or..... I can say the leftovers (should you have any ) are good at room temp or rewarmed in the CSO - I did one slice for 3 min on steam-bake @ 350°F to warm it nicely. Last night's dinner was the Cauliflower Ragu from Six Seasons p 189. Or, since I failed to follow the recipe WRT cooking times, it was a variation on the Cauliflower Ragu. It was very good and I would make it again. I like the concept of cooking most of the cauliflower with onions, garlic, red chile, white wine and rosemary until it becomes a sauce. The rest of the cauliflower is added later and cooked until very tender, at which point, the pasta is added and finished with butter, lemon juice and Parmesan cheese. The saga of my failure to follow directions: I chopped the onion, cauliflower and cauliflower leaves, heated the olive oil and tossed in the smashed garlic and red chile flakes. Then I went to get the "unoaked white wine." Hmmm. I have a lot of wine on hand but not much white. I found a lightly oaked Chardonnay and some Champagne, both fairly expensive bottles and neither of which were what I wanted to drink with this. The pinot noir I planned to drink would have turned the cauliflower pink and I wasn't sure how it would fare during the fairly long cooking time. I have both vermouth and sherry on hand but didn't like the idea of either in this dish. I finally settled on a dry rosé. I figured 1/2 cup of rosé probably wouldn't impart all that much color to all that cauliflower. By the time I returned to the kitchen, the garlic and chile flakes were looking awfully dark so I pitched them and started again. Once everything was in the pan, I adjusted the heat to a low simmer and flounced off to the other room with a glass of chilled rosé and a tiny wedge of yesterday's onion tart and dove into the recently published "France is a Feast" featuring the photographs of Paul Child. Sigh....what beautiful photography! Sigh....what is that delicious aroma of deeply caramelized onions? Sigh....am in in France? Oops! I was supposed to be popping into the kitchen occasionally to stir the cauliflower while it cooked for about 25 minutes. It is now almost an hour since I set everything to simmer ! I investigate and find that thanks to a nice heavy bottom pan and a low simmer setting, the onions are nicely caramelized and any cauliflower touching the bottom has turned a nice golden brown but nothing tastes or smells burned. So I continue and the dish ends up tasting delicious. It's much more of a brown color than the recipe in the book but still has the almost disintegrated cauliflower sauce with more tender cauliflower. Someday, I'll try it again per the recipe.

You might consider using a fine microplane to shred the ginger and maximize the surface area exposed to the liquid. It's what I've done to make non-alcoholic ginger syrup. And it certainly speeds up extraction of citrus zests for limoncello and the like.

This is the Onion and Pancetta Tart from Six Seasons p 352. The crust is a walnut vision of the Pecan Dough on p 49 and it's buttery and delicious. I was afraid that the full 5T of sugar would make it taste more like a shortbread cookie than a savory crust so I went down from 5T to 2T and was happy with it. I tend to leave pie crust to the doughboy but this one really makes the tart so I'm happy I made it, even though it is very tender and crumbly. I was tempted to use a pie pan but the thin tart pan was a better choice as unlike a quiche, the filling is mostly onions with just one egg yolk, 1/2 cup heavy cream and 2 oz gruyere cheese - just enough to hold the onions together. I used a very large onion and should have quartered instead of just halving it before slicing to minimize the long onion strings that annoyed me when trying to make nice slices but otherwise, everything worked well.

Farro and Roasted Carrot Salad with Apricots, Pistachios, and Whipped Ricotta from Six Seasons p 290. Carrots are roasted (CSO, steam-bake, 425°F, 15 min), farro, per the recipe on p 50, is lightly toasted in olive oil with a garlic clove and red chile flakes before adding water, salt and bay leaf. I did that in a small skillet, then transferred to the Instant Pot (pot-in-pot, 5' manual, high pressure). Thinly sliced red onion, chopped, dried apricots, parsley, toasted pistachios and ricotta salata or feta plus olive oil and white wine vinegar complete the salad, which is served on a smear of whipped ricotta p 37. I was mildly entertained that while the book is always having me soak scallions in ice water, something I've never done before, there is no mention of doing the same with the red onion in this recipe - and I always give raw red onions the ice bath treatment for salads - go figure! I liked the added flavor from the garlic and chile in the farro and while I enjoyed the dish, it didn't quite tickle my taste buds as much as the carrot dish with carrot-top salsa verde, avocado and squid that I made yesterday. I'm not a fan of cooked carrots so my enthusiasm for yesterday's dish is actually more surprising than my ambivalence towards this one.

The coffee and 6 mile walk are inspiring to me! Beef jerky....not so much

Sounds sadly like the situation with many white flowers that lack the vigor and fragrance of their pigmented relatives. Ah well. Your move to combine it with other squashes was a wise choice. My lunch was a crabmeat salad made with the artichoke mayonnaise from Six Seasons on a mini croissant (TJ's frozen, rise overnight & bake). Some chunks of avocado in there, too. The sandwich was lovely but I am also most delighted with my new thrift shop oval plate!

That looks really good! I've seen those white squashes at the farmers market but never purchased one so I didn't realize how light the flesh is compared with a regular green-skinned acorn squash. How do they taste?

The Kindle version of The Rye Baker: Classic Breads from Europe and America is currently $1.99 on Amazon.com but not on Amazon.ca

Pan-Roasted Carrots with Carrot-Top Salsa Verde, Avocado and Seared Squid from Six Seasons p 140. This recipe is in the Early Summer section of the book but I had nice carrots with fresh tops from the local farmers market so I decided to give this one a try. I'm very happy that I did. This dish has a lot of ingredients that I don't regularly use together so I really didn't know what it would taste like. There's a carrot-top salsa verde (some tasty stuff!) made with carrot tops, mint, parsley, scallions, lemon zest, a little hot sauce, salt & pepper and olive oil. I have some leftover and will follow the suggestion in the recipe header to use it as a condiment with simple roasted carrots. In addition to the carrots and squid, there's also pickled pepperoncini and pickling liquid, avocado and roasted pistachios. I thought pan-roasting the carrots was a bit fiddly but I did it. May try just roasting them in the oven next time.

Did you review the tables on Douglas Baldwin's site? @Okanagancook linked to it in the second post in this thread.

While there are many ingredients that complement each other well, I think it's pretty clear that one cook's rule is another's abomination ! I also take exception to the notion that a protein of some sort should be at the center of the plate and accompanied by "sides," whether they are "normal" or not!

Thank you! I was quite pleased with myself for thinking of it before the mayo went off entirely! It would probably make a nice chicken salad, too, but it absolutely shines with seafood, especially since I added extra lemon juice. I may try crab next....

Mixed up a shrimp salad using the artichoke mayonnaise from Six Seasons and put it on some little whole grain toasts I was bemoaning the fact that I didn't have a croissant ready for this but the crunchy toast turned out to be a good partner.

Romanesco. I love the fractal shape!

As you can see from these photos, it's peak season here from cauliflower and other Brassicas I went with the basic white. The one I picked was about average sized from this pile and weighed ~ 4.5 lbs. I used a lot of the fresh leaves in the "couscous" I posted just above. I used the big center slabs to make a version of the Cauliflower Steak with Provolone and Pickled Peppers from Six Seasons p 191. Love the bursts of salty-savory-sweet-hot flavors from the olives, capers and pickled peppers and would certainly make it again. I subbed Gruyère for the provolone and Pecorino Romano for the aged provolone because that's what I have on hand. The recipe calls for a "large head cauliflower, 1 1/2 - 1 3/4 lbs." Since mine was much bigger, I was a bit worried they wouldn't cook through but they came out fine. This recipe is delicious as is, but I had a hot Italian sausage leftover from the rigatoni so I crumbled, browned & drained it and added it to the topping. Makes it into a more substantial meal, especially if you are serving meat-lovers. Looking forward to using a bit of leftover topping to make stuffed mushrooms for cocktail hour

Raw "Couscous" Cauliflower with Almonds, Dried Cherries & Sumac from Six Seasons p 186. There's plenty of texture going on here - crunchy toasted nuts, chewy dried cherries, fresh greens and cauliflower that really does have a couscous-like texture. A lot of flavor, too, much of it sour - tart dried cherries, red wine vinegar and sumac. I'm usually adding acid to things but this was a bit sour for me. I had it as a main course, though I can see it working as a bracing side with other dishes. Maybe I was off in measuring out the vinegar? If I make it again, I'll drain the vinegar from the cherries and hold some of it back instead of tossing it all in along with the cherries.

Apologies in advance for my crappy photos. Yesterday's lunch was a recon mission with my cousin for an upcoming ladies lunch with a larger group. Last week, we went to a Korean restaurant that had good food but the staff were not particularly communicative so we vetoed it since a number of the group would be unfamiliar with the menu offerings. So we checked out the local branch of the Gyu-Kaku chain that's all over the place. I chose the Signature Cut Set from the lunch menu. Mostly slurped miso soup and half-eaten salad - greens, daikon, tomato, cucumber and hard boiled egg. Out of frame is a bowl of edamame and a bowl of steamed rice. Left to right below: garlic-marinated shrimp, thin sliced spicy yaki-shabu beef, harami miso skirt steak and kalbi beef short rib Sauces on the table were labeled: sweet-soy, spicy and ponzu I've never done this before and enjoyed it. We will go back with the other 6 ladies next week.

Now that's a toastie!

A version of the Rigatoni with Broccoli and Sausage from Six Seasons p 179. Rigatoni isn't my favorite pasta shape so I substituted cavatappi. Also, I was a little short on the broccoli so I sliced up the leaves off a head of cauliflower to make up the difference. For this dish, I made Instant Pot ricotta yesterday and whipped up the Whipped Ricotta p 37 - ricotta blended with olive oil, salt & pepper. I wasn't sure about this. Tasted on it's own, it seemed to take the nice fresh cheese and make it heavy and tasting of olive oil but just a little of it and the pasta water make a lovely creamy sauce. I enjoyed it. My first choice for a broccoli-sausage pasta would be to omit the cream but I appreciate the variety.

The links took me to my local Total Wine, where the liter of Cointreau is $40.99. It's 2 bucks cheaper at Hi-Time.