crispy squash blossoms with fromage blanc and fresh mint

 

serves 2-4 starters

6 oz. fromage blanc, fresh ricotta or chevre
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/4 cup grated parmesan reggiano
grated zest of 1/2 lemon
1 small bunch of finely chopped fresh mint, leaves only
1 red chili or jalapeno pepper, seeds and ribs removed, and finely chopped
coarse sea salt (maldon or fleur de sel work well)
1/2 cup flour
1 cup white wine such as pinot gris
8 fresh squash blossoms, also called zucchini flowers
canola oil or extra light olive oil
1 lemon (can be same one used for zest)

 

In a small bowl, combine first six ingredients, reserving a bit of mint for garnish.  Taste and season carefully with coarse sea salt.  Set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, wine and a pinch of salt until thick like heavy cream.  If it’s too thick, add more wine.  If too thin, add more water.  If you dip your finger in the batter, it should nicely coat it.

Gently, open the squash blossoms, taking care to keep them as intact as possible.  Pinch off the stamen, inside, as it tastes bitter.

Carefully fill the flowers with the cheese mixture, pressing the petals back together to form a seal around the filling.

Heat about two inches of oil to 350 degrees, using a thermometer to gauge temperature.  Turn on the kitchen fan and have a plate nearby with a layer of paper towels. 

Use tongs to dip the stuffed blossoms in the batter, one at a time, allowing the excess to drip off.  Use the tongs to place them in the hot oil.  Never drop them into the oil.  Watch for the edges to turn golden and turn once, using tongs.  Remove from oil with tongs and place on paper towels.  Repeat.  Two may be fried at the same time but be careful so they don’t stick together.  I prefer frying one at a time.  Place on serving plate and finish a squeeze of lemon, remaining chopped mint and coarse sea salt.  Eat them while they’re hot!

Delicious paired with a crisp, fruity white such as pinot gris

adapted from a recipe by Jamie Oliver

salmon nicoise

Serves 4

1 1/2 – 2 lbs wild king salmon filets
(I recommend looking for filets with plenty of white marbling as the fat is good for you and adds flavor and moisture to the fish)
1 1/2 lbs fresh haricots verts or green beans 
1 pint organic cherry tomatoes
1 large handful nicoise olives
1 small bunch organic basil
1/2  large lemon
unsalted butter
canola or extra light olive oil
good quality extra virgin olive oil
Maldon sea salt

First, rinse the salmon and pat dry with paper towels.  Check the fish carefully for bones and remove any that you find.  Cut salmon four pieces.  Season with salt.  Set aside.  

Halve or quarter the cherry tomatoes, depending on size.  Pit and quarter the nicoise olives.  Chop the basil into confetti-like strips.  Cut half a lemon into two wedges.  Wash and trim the haricots verts.  Blanch haricots verts for a few minutes in a steamer basket.  Do not overcook.  They should be bright green and still fairly firm.  Try one.  If it tastes raw, give it an extra minute or two.  Rinse beans with cold water and set aside.

Turn a large skillet on medium high.  Add 1 T unsalted butter and 1 T canola or extra light olive oil.  Once the butter begins to bubble but not quite brown, add the salmon, skin side up.  If the butter browns too quickly, turn the burner down to medium.  Leave the fish to sear for 3-5 minutes.  Using tongs, turn thicker chunks on each side to sear.  Once the exterior is nicely browned, turn the fish skin side down and allow to cook for an additional 3 minutes.  Remove fish from pan with tongs and set on a plate.  

Using the same pan, adjust heat to medium and add the haricots verts, tossing with any remaining juices in the pan.  Add tomatoes and olives tossing again to combine.  Squeeze lemon juice from 2 wedges over the mixture and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil.  Mix in the chopped basil.   Season with salt.    Place the salmon in the pan, on top of the haricots verts mixture, and broil in the oven on low for 2-4 minutes, keeping a close eye on the fish. 

Divide the haricots verts between four dinner plates and place a salmon filet in the center of each plate.  Evenly distribute any remaining juices and serve with slightly sour crusty bread such as the rosemary diamante from Essential Baking Company.

Salmon pairs beautifully with red wine.  Try it with the Firehouse Red from Tamarack Cellars, a Columbia Valley red blend.

eggs benedict

Saturday is brunch day at our house.

There are three rotating brunch menus from which I rarely stray.  Whole wheat buttermilk pancakes and Great Aunt Vi’s golden butter waffles are par for the course.  When feeling ambitious, I might whip up crepes with assorted fillings, including ham and gruyere, mushroom béchamel, lemon and sugar, nutella with strawberries, nutella with bananas and whipped cream…  Essentially, crepes are a thinly veiled excuse to justify nutella consumption.

Although my family was perfectly happy with my ‘repertoire a trois’, I decided that it was time for something new. 

I have always loved Eggs Benedict but had never before attempted to make them at home.  Last fall, I was inspired by a version at the darling restaurant, Jen’s Garden, while visiting my mom, in Sisters, Oregon.  It was by far the best interpretation I have encountered and I intended do my best to replicate it.

Rather than the traditional english muffin, I baked rosemary parmesan scones, modified from a recipe for a cheddar chive version.  I cut half the dough into triangles and the other half into circles.  The triangular scones came out better and provided a better visual contrast to the roundness of the poached eggs. 

I recently discovered a flavorful, smoked ham at Bill the Butcher, the new neighborhood butcher shop, in Madison Valley.  I grilled 1/4” slices of ham using my All-Clad grill pan, which makes authentic-looking grill lines on whatever you cook in it.  I love this pan for burgers and sandwiches, as well.

From the deep recesses of a kitchen cupboard, I retrieved my fancy, underused Belgian egg poacher, from Sur la Table.  One of our friends, who is a chef, mocked the ridiculousness of my having an egg poacher when it is apparently quite simple to poach eggs without one.  I admit, the final result ended up looking like something you would get from room service at a fancy hotel.  Not exactly rustic cuisine but pretty.  I used local, organic eggs from Stiebrs Farms.

For the hollandaise, I decided that Julia Child’s recipe in ‘The Way To Cook’ was the way to go.  I was terribly nervous about cooking the egg yolk and curdling the sauce but tried to remain calm as I whisked the eggs, lemon and butter into an emulsion.  Julia Child’s recipe has a stopping point at which you can chill the mixture and then add in the remaining butter when you are ready to use the sauce.  This was a great time saver and had no adverse affect on the finished product.  In fact, it came out beautifully and tasted as good as any I’ve had in a restaurant.  One suggestion that worked to keep the sauce from becoming too thick was to add 1-2 ice cubes while warming it on the burner.  For seasoning, I used white pepper to avoid those pesky black flecks in the pale yellow sauce. 

After splitting the scones in half, I placed grilled slices of ham on the halves and then perched the poached eggs atop the ham.  The eggs were blanketed with hollandaise and a delicate dusting of paprika.  They were postively picture perfect.

Organic strawberries, blackberries, blueberries and raspberries were mixed with fresh squeezed lime juice, a touch of superfine sugar and a sprinkle of fragrant chopped mint.  I am not a fan of flavors mingling on my plate unless they were intended to and the brulee cups were the ideal solution.

Using a vintage French Mouli shredder, I shredded organic russet potatoes for hash browns.  You can’t hurry hash browns, which I did, by turning them too often and using the wrong pan.  The crispy brown part that was supposed to make them hash browns, as opposed to just ‘hash’, would not budge from the bottom of the pan.  In the end, they were alright; but decidedly more of a cross between hash browns and mashed potatoes.  I called them ‘mash browns’.  I may be on to something…

I found that the trickiest part was keeping everything warm while assembling each of the plates.  With guests joining us for brunch, I was frantically trying to get five plates ready at the same time.  This is precisely why they put everything under a warmer in restaurants.

Brunch is a great excuse to drink in the middle of the day.  With this meal, I served our favorite Prosecco, called Jeio. 

The eggs benedict were delicious and a welcome departure from the typical Saturday fare but they were also a lot of work.  Next Saturday, it’s pancakes and bacon, all the way.

fresh alaskan halibut with asparagus, morels, sweet corn and fingerling potatoes, two ways

Spring had sprung and the time came to do something new with halibut.  Morels, with their short season, were calling my name.  Local asparagus had reared its pointy head.  The fish would happily bed down upon Russian banana fingerlings.  Sweet yellow corn was a shoo in; the ideal counterpart to an otherwise savory compilation. 

I began by slicing the potatoes in 1/4” thick ‘coins’.  Half were tossed with Maldon sea salt and olive oil and roasted in the oven on low broil; the other half were parboiled and set aside.  
Leeks pair beautifully with halibut.  I sliced two of them in half, horizontally, up to the pale green part and then cut those into 1/4”  half moons.  I then caramelized the leeks with light olive oil in my Le Creuset, at medium heat. 

After rinsing the morels to remove unwanted grime and possible insects (par for the course), I patted them dry with paper towels, quartered them and added them to the pan with the leeks, allowing the mushrooms to cook for a few minutes.  The asparagus were cut into 1/2” pieces and added to the pan with the leeks and morels. 

After a couple of minutes, I added around 1/2 cup pinot grigio and let it cook down a bit before stirring in 1/2 - 1 cup heavy cream.  Once the mixture began to simmer and thicken slightly, I removed the pan from the heat and strained the sauce, through a sieve, into a medium-sized bowl.

I poured the strained liquid into a new pan, on medium low heat.  Rather than cook the corn, I sliced the starchy sweet kernels right off the cob and into the pan, then added the parboiled potato ‘coins’ and left that mixture to warm on medium low, seasoning with salt, to taste.  The strained morel/leek/asparagus mixture went into another pan, on low heat to keep warm.

Equal parts butter and extra light olive or canola oil are ideal for searing fish, creating a perfect golden exterior, and this was the method used to cook the halibut.  I heated about 1 tablespoon of each, on medium-high, and seared small fist-sized chunks of halibut, skin off, for 2-3 minutes on each side.  When the fish is flipped too soon, it sticks.  If it resists the spatula, I wait, turning down the burner, if needed.

Once the fish was ready, I assembled the dish, starting with a base of the cream/potato/corn mixture.  I placed the seared halibut over  that and spooned the asparagus/leek/morel mixture around the fish with a mound of asparagus and morels atop the fish.  I then added a smattering of roasted potato ‘coins’ and the dish was ready to serve.  Lemon could easily be incorporated in this dish by adding a small amount of zest to the cream mixture or to finish the dish. 

This recipe is loosely based on an entree I fell in love with two summers ago at Seratto in Portland, OR. 

chicken pot pie

in loving memory of my stepmom georgina who loved chicken pot pie best of all.

One afternoon, I stood in front of my favorite produce stand, in the Pike Place Market and awaited my turn while simultaneously awaiting divine inspiration for dinner.  I soon overlooked divinity in favor of eavesdropping as the woman ahead of me shared her dinner plans:  chicken pot pie with bacon, marjoram and crème fraiche.  You had me at bacon.

It was an “I’ll have what she’s having” moment.  Of course, no recipe is complete without a few personal touches. 

As the woman in front of me rattled off her list of ingredients, which included carrots, green beans and onions, I omitted onions in favor of leeks and tacked on fingerling potatoes, which I planned to slice in 1/4 inch rounds and parboiled to insure doneness.  I opted for organic bunch carrots rather than the suggested baby carrots, which was a minor detail.  The original recipe called for an already roasted deli chicken.  I decided to buy free range chicken breasts, rub them with olive oil and sea salt and broil them in the oven.  I increased the amount of crème fraiche, to make a thicker sauce, and I added white wine, a sauvignon blanc.

Puff pastry is to chicken pot pie what icing is to cake and I like to gussy mine up with petite hearts, crimped edges and an egg wash.  The little hearts puff up adorably when they bake.  Puff pastry is something that I have not attempted to make myself but I generally find the grocery store varieties disappoint.  They contain hydrogenated fat among other unpronounceable ingredients.  As luck would have it, there is an outstanding puff pastry called Dufour, available at gourmet grocery stores, nationwide, such as Metropolitan Market, in Seattle.  It is award winning and with good reason.  The ingredient which puts the Dufour dough on its pedestal is high quality European butter, sorely lacking in its hydrogenated counterparts.  The price tag will set you back about triple what you pay for the other brands but it is worth every penny.

I love making this chicken pot pie for new moms and I usually tuck a few extras in our freezer for evenings when inspiration proves elusive.

When I wearily utter the words, “What should I make for dinner?” 

My daughter, Annabelle will often reply, “My, oh my, chicken pot pie!”