On 1/13/2018 at 12:51 PM, Anna N said:Thanks for sharing your experience with this. I still think I might give it a go since our tastes are not necessarily identical.
I am especially enamoured of James Beard’s iconic onion sandwich and one of the options for using this mayo is with spring onions to make the sandwich.
I followed up on that suggestion in Six Seasons and used spring onions I bought at yesterday's farmers market and the Artichoke Mayonnaise p 42 for this take on James Beard's onion sandwiches:
I should have made one with regular mayo for a side-by-side comparison but in any case, they were tasty little fellows!
I also finished off some vegetables by trying a couple of recipes. Burnt Carrots with Honey, Black Pepper and Almonds p 294.
I don't particularly care for cooked carrots but was curious about the method of roasting them until they are very dark brown, then cutting them into chunks and marinating briefly with white wine vinegar before they get drizzled with honey, dotted with butter and returned to the oven until they are fully tender. Served topped with chopped, toasted almonds.
This recipe is in the "late season" carrots section so I expect it would have been better with larger carrots than the smaller spring carrots I had. Glad I tried it. Probably won't do it again.
Another curiosity for me was the Fried Cauliflower with Spicy Fish-Sauce Sauce p 194. The recipe calls for deep frying the cauliflower florets (not breaded or battered, just dropped into the oil) until they are dark brown. I don't usually deep fry things so I made a variation with roasted cauliflower instead. Overall, I thought this was OK but not an enormous upgrade over the deliciousness that results from a lovely fresh cauliflower, sliced and roasted to golden brown with olive oil, salt & pepper. That's pretty great right there, in my book.
After frying (or in my case, roasting) the cauliflower is tossed with chopped fresh garlic that's been soaking in olive oil and some of the Spicy Fish Sauce Sauce p 43. As suggested, I made the sauce the day before so I could taste and adjust it before using. I'm glad I did as it's really salty so I held back on salting the cauliflower. Also, the sauce has quite a bit of garlic in it so I'm not sure the additional fresh garlic is necessary. I tried it both ways and preferred it with less fresh garlic added to the cauliflower.
I had some of the chopped, toasted almonds handy so I tossed some of them with the cauliflower and found the crunch to be a good addition.
Perhaps the deep frying brings more crunch and magic to the dish but I probably won't try that.
Here are the ingredients for the Spicy Fish Sauce Sauce
I used serrano and manzano chiles in the sauce. The recipe says to use a mix of colors. Not sure why - you can see the colors in the photo below but they all turn sort of brown after sitting overnight.
This morning, I made the Roasted Fennel with Apples, Taleggio Cheese and Almonds p 157. I like this one a lot.
This recipe also includes fennel sausage (or as I substituted, Italian sausage plus fennel seeds) which gets crumbled and browned. Sliced fennel is shallow steam/sautéed with a little olive oil, garlic and chile flakes. Sausage, fennel, thin apple wedges, chopped, toasted almonds, fresh thyme and some of the Taleggio cheese all get turned into a baking dish and topped with more cheese, dry breadcrumbs p 30 and dotted with butter, then baked.
I loved all the textures in this dish and would certainly make it again.
