Truffle Mania

We purchased a black truffle from Palate Food + Wine and decided to have an all Truffle Dinner. We invited Robert and Darryl over to share the fungus from Italy. We planned to make Risotto with truffles followed by Eggs with Truffles. We talked to Steve at Palate and he said he would join us for dinner an gave us some recipe ideas. Unfortunately he was ill and couldn’t make it. But we did follow his advice, completely changing what we were preparing to make. It was a wise choice; his ideas for cooking truffles were great.

We started with the simplest of Truffle Pasta. Egg pasta, butter, salt, pepper combined with chopped leeks that were slow cooked in butter, sprinkle with chives then shave the truffle over the pasta and  - enjoy!

We then made Scallops with Truffles. We purchased beautiful ones at McCall’s Meat and Fish. We split them in half and put them under the broiler for about 30 seconds on each side. We covered with Chive Oil and served with Brioche Toast. It was delicious. We purchased the Bread from Proof in Atwater Village. The recipe for Chive Oil can be found in our blog June 4, 2011. Click the date to get the recipe.

To complete our Truffle Dinner we had to have Chocolate Truffles for dessert. The best in the city are the caramel filled ones from Valarie Confections. Luckily the small artisanal chocolate maker is near us. It is fun to visit the store and see the chocolate making.

Chicken and Fig

Figs are in season and we decided to make Chicken with Figs. This is a delicious dish. It is started on the stove top then finished in the oven. You can get the recipe from our blog of June 23,2008. Just click the date to get the recipe.

It's Alive!

Robert and Darryl decided to combine courses with us and create a joint dinner.

We were planning to make a Mushroom Lasagna from a recipe from our new cookbook: Plenty by Ottolenghi. We had purchased a lot of Chanterelle Mushrooms at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market. We knew it would be great! We modified the recipe and substituted pecorino cheese for the parmesan. It worked out just fine.

Robert and Darryl brought 2 courses: a Fish Salad with Baby Squid that was light and very tasty. They also brought fresh shrimp. Real fresh shrimp. Extremely fresh shrimp. When Robert opened the package of shrimp he screamed as the not so small shrimps started walking around. They were still alive. He didn’t get the shrimp he thought he was ordering. He got live Santa Barbara Spot Prawns. These shrimps think they are lobsters. Some of them had roe, which I love, and they had lots of meat on them. We sprinkled them with olive oil, salt and pepper and gilled them on the barbeque for 2 minutes on each side. They were perfect! It was fun using our hands to shell them and get to the meat and roe. Robert and Darryl took the shells home to make shrimp stock.

We had eaten a Chocolate Caramel Cake from Proof Bakery and just loved it. We decided that we wanted it for dessert. After Pilates we went to Proof arriving there at noon and they didn’t have one. They know us there, and we asked if they would bake us one. We knew they closed at 4pm. Incredibly they said they would bake it for us just return in 4 hours. I can’t think of another bakery that would do that. The cake is amazing! I am really glad they baked it special for us. Just look at the caramel!

Mushroom Lasagna

Plenty by Ottolenghi

It took the aid of Cook's Illustrated, a magazine for food nerds like me, to enable me to crack the secret for a perfect cheesy lasagne. Serve this with an arugula and tomato salad.

Serves 6-8

1-1/4         oz dried porcini mushrooms

1-3/4         cups lukewarm water

5         tbsp unsalted butter

1         tbsp thyme leaves

1-3/4         lbs mixed fresh mushrooms, sliced if large

2         tbsp chopped tarragon

4         tbsp chopped parsley

salt and white pepper

5         tbsp unsalted butter

1         small shallot, chopped

scant ½ cup all-purpose flour

2-1/3         cups milk

13         fl oz ricotta

1         large egg

5         oz feta, crumbled

6         oz Gruyere, grated

1         lb dried spinach lasagne

5         oz fontina cheese (or mozzarella), grated

½         cup grated Parmesan

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Cover the porcini with the lukewarm water and leave to soak for 5 minutes. Drain in a sieve set over a bowl, squeezing the mushrooms to remove all the liquid; reserve the liquid.

Melt the butter in a large heavy-based saucepan. When foaming add the thyme, porcini and fresh mushrooms. Cook for 4 minutes, or until the mushrooms have softened and exuded some of their liquid, stirring occasionally. Off the heat, stir in the tarragon, parsley and some salt and pepper. Transfer to a bowl and set aside.

Use the same pan to make a bechamel. Put the butter and shallot in the pan and cook on medium heat for about a minute. Add the flour and continue cooking, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes; the mix will turn into a paste but shouldn't color much. Gradually whisk in the milk and porcini soaking liquid, leaving any grit in the bowl. Add 1/2 teaspoon salt and continue whisking until boiling. Simmer on low heat, stirring constantly, for about 10 minutes, or until the sauce is thickish. Remove from the heat.

In a small bowl mix together the ricotta and egg, then fold in 3 tablespoons of the bechamel and the feta. Add the Gruyere to the remaining bechamel in the pan and stir well to get your main sauce.

Pour boiling water over the lasagne noodles (do this a few at a time so they don't stick together) and soak for 2 minutes; remove and dry them on a tea towel.

To assemble the lasagne, pour one-fifth of the sauce over the bottom of an ovenproof dish that is about 10 x 14 inches. Cover with lasagne noodles. Spread one-quarter of the ricotta mix on top, scatter over one-quarter of the mushrooms and sprinkle with one-quarter of the fontina. Make three more layers in the same way, then finish with a layer of pasta covered with sauce.

Sprinkle the Parmesan on top and cover loosely with foil (don't lay it directly on the surface of the lasagne). Bake for 40 minutes, or until the sauce is bubbling around the sides. Lift off the foil and bake for a further 10 minutes, or until the top turns golden. Remove from the oven and leave to rest for 10 minutes before serving.

My Favorite Summer Pasta!

We started our dinner with appetizers from Spain. We love Cristina's From Spain!

By looking at the previous dinner you know we are NOT vegetarians. But there are many fantastic meals that contain no meat. We made Penne with Tomato and Balsamic Vinegar From: Rogers and Gray: Italian Country Cookbook. I can’t rave enough about this simple to make pasta! It is fabulous! It is rich! It will make you a vegetarian! You MUST try it. You can get the recipe for it from our blog of: Oct. 26, 2008. Click the date to get the recipe.

What a Bone!

Cathy and I had been to a new to us restaurant named: Salt’s Cure in West Hollywood. We had a pork chop and it had an incredibly long bone. I thought it was an amazing presentation. I took the bone home and showed it to Nate at McCall’s Meat and Fish. He said he could butcher meat like that. We returned to McCall’s one Saturday and saw a Rib-Eye Steak with the longest bone I had ever seen. Although we had dinner reservations for the next night, we cancelled them and bought the dinosaur-like steak. It was great tasting. If only we had a dog! It did fit (just barely on the grill).

To start, I made Bruschetta by coating bread with olive oil and chopped garlic, then grilling on the Weber next to the steak. Chopped tomatoes, basil, red onion, salt, pepper, vinegar and olive oil made for a tasty starter. Next time I will add some capers.

We made fantastic Oven-Roasted Potatoes. They turned out extremely crispy. They are delicious. They are from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper. This is a fabulous recipe. They are easy to make and we HIGHLY recommend them! You can find the recipe in our blog of: April 10, 2010. Click the date to get the recipe.

Fresh Corn on the Cob completed the dinner. We folded back the husks buttered the corn, added salt and pepper then squeezed fresh lime juice over the corn. We then folded the husk back up over the corn cob, covered each ear with aluminum foil and through it on the grill, rolling it around for about 5 minutes until all sides were cooked. It was perfect!

Shrimp

We went to the Farmer’s Market in Atwater Village and saw a new stand (for us at least) that sold imported food products from Spain called: Cristina's from Spain. Now that I think of it, I don’t understand how they can sell their products at a local farmer’s market, but that is another story.

We started talking to the salesperson, Tony, at the stand and he was fun to talk to, highly enthusiastic and charming. The products he sold turned out to be excellent - Manchego and Blue Cheeses, Iberico,  and the best Manzanilo Olive I have ever eaten. We also bought a very sweet cracker from him that was great with the appetizers.  It was perfect for a hot night with rose wine.

We had the leftover home made polenta that was so good, and I suggested that we make shrimp to go with it. We picked up the shrimp at McCall’s and made our new favorite shrimp recipe from Ottolenghi The Cookbook: Buttered Prawns with Tomato, Olives and Arak. I love this dish, and it goes perfectly over the polenta. You can find the recipe for the the shrimp in our blog of: July 16, 2011. Click the date to get the recipe. You can find the recipe for the sweet corn Polenta in our blog of: August 11, 2011. Click the date to get the recipe.  

Welcome back Shu

Our friend Shu had returned from a vacation in Italy and we decided to invite him over for dinner. One of our favorite summer soups is a Fig and Tomato Soup from Moro East Cookbook by Sam & Sam Clark. It is flavored with cumin, as absolutely wonderful. Most people when they first hear about it are very dubious. The idea of a soup with figs is not natural to them. Once they taste the soup they definitely change their minds!

We are continuing to cook our way through the two cookbooks by Ottolenghi. The vegetarian recipe we made for the main course was from the Plenty Cookbook. We made: Sweet Corn Polenta with Eggplant. This was an exciting dish for us to make. We have made polenta dozens of time, but we have NEVER made fresh Polenta. We have previously always made it from a box. This was made from fresh corn ears! It was fantastic and sweeter than the polenta from the box. The addition of the feta cheese gave a tangy / sour taste that was a revelation. This is an only in Summer dish, when corn is at its peak sweetness!

Sweet corn polenta with Eggplant

Plenty by Ottolenghi

Polenta made from fresh corn is almost like baby food, but in a good sense. It is smooth, sweet and soothing, a bit like a chunky savory porridge. It is my ideal heartwarming supper meal. Just keep in mind that it is nothing like regular polenta made from cornmeal - it is softer and not as substantial.

This dish is a variation on a recipe by two inspiring Israeli food writers, Haim Cohen and Eli Landau.

Serves 4

Eggplant Sauce

2/3        cup vegetable oil

1           medium eggplant, cut into 3/4-inch dice

2           tsp tomato paste

¼          cup white wine

1           cup chopped peeled tomatoes (fresh or canned)

6-1/2    tbsp water

¼          tsp salt

¼          tsp sugar

1           tbsp chopped oregano

Polenta

6           ears of corn

2-1/4    cups water

3           tbsp butter, diced

7           oz feta, crumbled

¼          tsp salt

black pepper

To make the eggplant sauce. Heat up the oil in a large saucepan and fry the eggplant on medium heat for about 15 minutes, or until nicely brown. Drain off as much oil as you can and discard it. Add the tomato paste to the pan and stir with the eggplant. Cook for 2 minutes, then add the wine and cook for 1 minute. Add the chopped tomatoes, water, salt, sugar and oregano and cook for a further 5 minutes to get a deep-flavored sauce. Set aside; warm it up when needed.

To make the polenta. Remove the leaves and "silk" from each ear of corn, then chop off the pointed top and stalk. Stand each ear upright on its base and use a sharp knife to shave off the kernels. You want to have VM lbs of kernels.

Place the kernels in a medium saucepan and cover them with the water. Cook for 12 minutes on a low simmer. Use a slotted spoon to lift the kernels from the water and into a food processor; reserve the cooking liquid. Process them for quite a few minutes, to break as much of the kernel case as possible. Add some of the cooking liquid if the mixture becomes too dry to process.

Now return the corn paste to the pan with the cooking liquid and cook, while stirring, on low heat for 10 to 15 minutes, or until the mixture thickens to a mashed potato consistency. Fold in the butter, the feta, salt and some pepper and cook for a further 2 minutes. Taste and add more salt if needed.

Divide the polenta among shallow bowls and spoon some warm eggplant sauce in the center.

Tomato soup with cumin and figs

From Moro East by Sam & Sam Clark

This soup is based on a recipe from Fra Juan's restaurant in the monastery of Guadalupe. It is strictly a summer dish, an interesting Spanish twist on a classic tomato soup. While serving this soup at the restaurant, a waiter over­heard a customer say it was the best tomato soup she had ever had. Of course, it was a moment when the ingredients did shine. It was at the beginning of August, after a heat wave, and British tomatoes tasted as good as they get. The allotment figs were superb, too. It's a thrill to find recipes that have been cooked for hundreds of years, but in the end this means nothing unless the ingredients are at their peak.

Serves 4

6                tablespoons olive oil

1                kg flavorful tomatoes, roughly sliced

1                medium onion, chopped

1                green pepper, chopped

150-300     ml water

3                garlic cloves, chopped

a little caster sugar (optional)

2 ½            teaspoons cumin seeds, lightly toasted in a pan, then crushed

5 or 6         ripe, plump fresh figs, finely diced

400g          tin of chopped plum tomatoes, drained of juice

a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, to serve

100g          dried figs, chopped

Heat the olive oil in a saucepan over a medium heat, add the onion and green pepper with a good pinch of salt and cook gently for 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until softened. Add the garlic and continue cooking until sweet and golden brown. Add two-thirds of the cumin and cook for 1 minute more. Now add the tinned tomatoes and dried figs and simmer gently, uncovered, for 50-60 minutes, stirring now and then. When the mixture is rich and concen­trated, put in the fresh tomatoes and increase the heat slightly, then simmer for 15 minutes more. With a handheld blender, whizz until smooth, then pour in enough of the water to achieve a consistency like double cream. Season well with salt, pepper and sugar if necessary.

Stir half the fresh figs through the soup and use the rest to garnish each portion in the bowl, along with the remaining cumin and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.

Veal Chop

I

I had wanted for sometime to grill Veal Chops. We finally purchased them at McCall’s Meat and Fish. Of course, they were excellent. Veal chops don’t have a lot of flavor so the key is what you serve with them. We knew that veal does not have a lot of flavor, so we decided to make a Vinegar Butter for it from The Wolfgang Puck Cookbook. It is a great sauce for Veal Chops.

We had previously had grilled corn, so I cut the Corn from the cob and added Avocado, Diced Red Onions and made a Fresh Corn Salad. It worked out exactly as I planned it was excellent.

Robert and Darryl had just returned from London and while there had seen a recipe in the Guardian Newspaper for Baked Tomatoes by our favorite: Ottolenghi. Apparently the Guardian prints many of his recipes. We made it as an accompaniment for the veal. It was delicious. What goes better than good bread and tomatoes?

We cooked extra chops and had them as leftovers. We made a Salad with White Nectarines, Hazelnuts, Saba and Prosciutto. Easy and just yells of summer fruit.

Baked tomatoes with baguette

Ottolenghi (The Guardian Newspaper)

It's hardly news to point out that tomato and bread make one of the best of all food marriages – that's why pizza margarita and pan con tomate are so popular. That said, using a chunk of bread to mop up tomatoey juices from a bowl is one of the most gratifying end-of-meal rituals I know. This dish maximises that effect. To make it vegetarian, omit the anchovies and use another hard cheese instead of parmesan. Serves four.

2 tbsp double cream
3 anchovy fillets, finely chopped
1 tsp brown sugar
1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed
½ sprig rosemary, finely chopped
1½ tbsp olive oil, plus extra for the croutons
50g finely grated parmesan
900g top-notch tomatoes of as many colours and sizes as you can get
1 small French baguette, half to make croutons and half to serve
2 tbsp picked oregano leaves

Heat the oven to 200C/400F/gas mark 6. In a small bowl, mix the cream, anchovies, sugar, garlic, rosemary, oil and a third of the cheese. Cut larger tomatoes widthways into 1.5cm slices and halve smaller ones. Put them in a bowl and pour in the cream mix. Gently combine with your hands, so the tomatoes are coated, then place cut side up in a 22cm x 26cm ovenproof dish; bake for 15-20 minutes, until their edges start to crisp.

Meanwhile, cut the crust off half the baguette and tear the bread into rough chunks ranging from small crumbs to 1cm pieces – you should end up with 80g of croutons. Toss them in a tablespoon of oil, spread out on a baking sheet and bake alongside the tomatoes for seven minutes, until dry and lightly golden.

Remove both trays from the oven and spread the croutons on top of the tomatoes. Sprinkle over the remaining cheese and the oregano, and bake for seven minutes more, until the cheese has melted. Remove, set aside for 20-30 minutes (the flavour intensifies), then serve with the rest of the baguette.

Vinegar Butter

The Wolfgang Puck Cookbook

1 large shallot minced

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

¼ cup zinfandel vinegar or strong vinegar

½ cup dry white wine

¼ cup veal demi-glace

Place the shallot in an enameled, stainless steel or other non-reactive saucepan with 1 tablespoon of butter and sauté it for a few minutes over medium heat. Deglaze the pan with the vinegar, then reduce it to 2 tablespoons. Add the wine, reduce by half, then add the demi-glace and continue to reduce the sauce until it lightly coats the back of a spoon.

Whish the remaining butter into the sauce, a little at a time, over low heat. When all the butter has been incorporated, season the sauce with salt and pepper and keep it warm

Spoon the sauce over the grilled veal chop.

Heirloom Zucchini Pasta

One of favorite pastas is Zucchini Pasta. At the Hollywood Farmer’s Market for a short time in the summer we can get heirloom Zucchinis which have a fabulous taste. We made the pasta from a recipe by Mark Bittman in the New York Times. This is an amazing dish. The zucchinis are sliced thin and browned making a delicious sauce. We had recently purchased a French Magimax that has a slicer attachment and it made quick work of the zucchini. With the addition of eggs and parmesan cheese it is like a Carbonara.

It is very easy to make and delicious. You can get the recipe from our blog of: June 19, 2009. Click the date to get the recipe.