Grilled Shrimp and Pomegranite On Cauliflower Puree

Posted on by JDL

Cauliflower purée can work as a lovely backdrop for other flavors, in this case grilled shrimp. It’s low in carbs and won’t get sticky like potatoes.

  • 1.5 lb shelled, deveined raw shrimp
  • 1/3 cup fresh pomegranate seeds
  • 1/4 cup toasted pine nuts
  • 2 tablespoons dried currants soaked in lemon juice
  • 1/2 cup Italian flat leaf Parsley
  • 2 tablespoons of tarragon leaves
  • 8 cloves garlic
  • 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
  • 2 tablespoons lemon juice
  • Sea Salt and pepper
  • 8 oz cauliflower rice (this is simply raw cauliflower that has been cut into rice sized pieces for convenience. You could certainly chop up a whole cauliflower)

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  1. Marinate Shrimp: Mince 6 cloves garlic. Toss shrimp with the minced garlic and 1/4 cup olive oil, ground black pepper and a few pinches of salt. Marinate for at least an hour.
  2. Make Herb Dressing: place the two remaining cloves of garlic, parsley leaves, tarragon and 1/4 cup of olive oil in a food processor and blend until you have a bright green purée. Season with salt and pepper and lemon juice to taste. Remove purée to a bowl.
  3. Make Cauliflower Purée: microwave cauliflower rice about 5 minutes until tender. Place cooked cauliflower in a clean food processor bowl with 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Purée until smooth. Season with salt, white pepper and lemon juice. You’ll have to reheat this when you’re ready to plate. I like to use the microwave to reheat the purée
  4. Grill Shrimp: heat grill to high and place shrimp on grill. Almost as soon as you’ve laid out your shrimp, it’s time to start turning over the first ones to brown on the other side. Warm the dressing in the microwave and toss the shrimp in the dressing until lightly coated.
  5. Plate Shrimp: place about 1/3 cup of warm cauliflower purée in the center of each plate. Pile about 5 shrimp in the center of the purée. Scatter each plate with pomegranate seeds, pine nuts and currants.

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This dish could easily be done with puréed fennel instead of cauliflower. In that event, I’d slice the fennel really thin and cook it gently in a covered sauté pan with a few tablespoons of water until tender. Purée it and add olive oil, salt, pepper, lemon juice and a little Pastis to taste. Omit the tarragon in the herb dressing.

Moroccan Roasted Carrots

Posted on by JDL

One lovely rainy day I found myself quite alone with nothing to do. I decided to drive downtown to see how Restoration Hardware had renovated the Three Arts Club where they are currently residing. It’s a beautiful old building and RH had managed to turn it into a retail space while respecting the buildings grace and age.

After wandering around for a while I took myself to lunch on the main floor where RH had created a restaurant housed in a beautiful courtyard with a fountain. I had this very nice salad, which combined things that I love in a creamy, crunchy, sweet and salty combination. I didn’t bother asking for the recipe. It’s elegant in its simplicity.

  • 1lb multi colored baby carrots (purple, white, orange)
  • 1 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
  • 1/2 teaspoon powdered coriander
  • 2 cloves garlic
  • Salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
  • 6 oz container whole milk Greek yogurt
  • 1 tablespoon honey
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
  • 1 tablespoon freshly chopped mint
  • One lemon
  • Pistachios

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  1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees
  2. Mash salt, garlic, black pepper, ground coriander and cumin seeds into a paste. Add olive oil to the paste
  3. Coat carrots with paste and cook until tender. Cooking time varies depending of the thickness of the carrots, between 20-30 minutes.
  4. Mix cardamom, honey and about a teaspoon of lemon juice into the yogurt. Adjust seasonings to your preference.
  5. Place yogurt on a platter and place the carrots on top.
  6. Scatter pistachios, chopped mint and sliced dates over the carrots and around the platter.

Cranberry Pomegranate Tart

Posted on by JDL

I love curds: lemon, lime, grapefruit and passion fruit all make great curds because they are sour. I recently came across cranberry curd tart recipes in The New York Times and the magazine ” Bake”. There are some differences in both those recipes and I also made some changes. the biggest difference is that I add the butter last, not first. This improves the texture of the cream.

This is a nice curd to do around the holidays. Both pomegranates and cranberries are in the stores fresh, from November-December which makes it a nice seasonal dessert.

CRANBERRY AND POMEGRANATE TARTS

  • 8 fully baked Pate Sucree 4″ tart shells or one 9″ tart shell ( see recipe on another page of my blog
  • 12 oz fresh cranberries
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • Zest of one large naval orange
  • Juice of one large naval orange and enough lemon juice to make up a volume of 1/2 cup of liquid.
  • 2 large eggs
  • 2 large egg yolks
  • 4oz unsalted butter cut in to 16 pieces
  • Salt

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  1. Rub the sugar and orange zest between your fingers to release the orange oil.
  2. Combine sugar, zest, orange juice, and cranberries in a 1 quart sauce pan and bring to a simmer.
  3. Simmer cranberries for between 5 and 8 minutes u til most of the cranberries have popped and released their liquid. Be careful not to overcook.
  4. Run cranberries through a food mill with the finest disc. Discard the skins that won’t push through.
  5. Crack eggs and combine the whole eggs and yolks, wisking until homogenous.
  6. Temper eggs with some of the hot cranberry mixture and combine the rest of the cranberries and eggs.
  7. Place cranberry/egg mixture in a clean 1 quart sauce pan and cook over low to medium heat depending on your comfort level, wisking constantly. I like to use medium heat because I’m impatient but I always have a an immersion blender and a cold, wet towel folded on the counter near the stove. If it looks like it’s going to curdle I remove the pan from the heat and place it on the cold towel and whisk like crazy or use the immersion blender to smooth out the mixture.
  8. Wisk until thickened. The mixture should reach about 170 degrees and your wisk should leave tracks in the curd.
  9. Run curd through a fine meshed sieve and let cool to about 140 F.
  10. Using an immersion blender, blend butter in to curd, 4 pieces at a time. Once butter is incorporated blend another 3 minutes. This aerates the cream and makes it light and smooth. It also lightens the color so if you want a deeper color, just wisk the butter in gently.
  11. Pour curd into pre baked tart shell and smooth it with an offset spatula.
  12. Now, you have the option of popping the filled tart into a 350 F degree oven for about 8 minutes to set the curd and make it easier to slice. I wouldn’t bother doing this with the small tarts but for a large tart that you have to cut into individual pieces, there’s an argument for baking. It does change the texture of the curd a bit, losing some of that unctuous creaminess. This curd is fairly stiff so you will be able to slice it without baking it, but if you need super clean edges, setting the curd in the oven is the way to go. If you bake it, let it cool before you put the pomegranate seeds on it.
  13. Decoratively place some pomegranate seeds around the perimeter of the tart and chill until service.
  14. To plate this, you could serve it with a dollop of whipped cream on the side, or you could buy extra cranberries, make a coulis and use the coulis do some decorative smears on the plate. For the coulis, I would buy extra cranberries and repeat the first three steps of this recipe, however, instead of running the mixture through a food mill and pushing it through a sieve, I would place the mixture in a medium sieve and let the juices drip through, pushing gently on the cranberries. The goal is to get s pretty clear sauce, not a purée.

Italian Spiced Plum Cake

Posted on by JDL

This is quite a lovely recipe a version, of which was originally printed in The NY Times with the title “Plum Torte” and is deserving of all its devoted followers. It’s very like a cake my Sicilian grandmother used to make with apples. I made it last week and again this week. I’m obsessed! Fortunately, the season for Stanley plums, commonly known as Italian prune plums is coming to an end.

The NY Times recipe has a few versions, published at varying times. Depending on the publication, the cinnamon varies between 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1 tablespoon. The sugar varies between 1cup and 3/4 cup. I think 3/4 cup of sugar is plenty sweet and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon is likewise enough. The recipe doesn’t call for any flavoring in the cake, just cinnamon sugar on top. I love a combination of cinnamon, star anise and vanilla for plums and often make plum preserves with these flavors. So I added a bit of vanilla to the batter and added some star anise to the cinnamon and sugar that’s sprinkled on top. I also changed the granulated sugar to sanding sugar for the top as I like a bigger crunch.

The original recipe also gives you a choice of baking in an 8″, 9″ or 9″ springform pan. I think 10″ would be too big because the resulting cake would be very flat and 8″ too small because there wouldn’t be enough of the crusty top or enough plums. 9″ is just right. The original recipe calls for unbleached AP flour but I prefer bleached for cakes. It gives a more tender crumb. Finally, the NYT recipe doesn’t call for any salt. I salt everything so I added a pinch.

Ingredients:

  • 150 grams (3/4 cup) superfine granulated white sugar
  • 114 grams, 4 oz unsalted butter, softened
  • 125 grams (1 cup)bleached AP flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 2 large eggs
  • 12 italian plums (Stanley), halved and pitted (24 halves)
  • Pinch of salt (1/8 tsp)
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
  •  teaspoon Ceylon cinnamon
  • 1/8 teaspoon ground star anise
  • 3 tablespoons of sanding sugar or granulated for sprinkling on top.
  • 1/2 a small lemon (this yields roughly 2 teaspoons lemon juice

Instructions:

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
  2. Wisk together the 3 tablespoons of sugar and the spices
  3. Line the bottom of the pan with a round of parchment. If it’s nonstick, you needn’t grease the sides otherwise grease and flour the sides of an9″ springform pan.
  4. Cream the sugar and butter until light and silky
  5. Add in eggs, one at a time, reading until light and fluffy
  6. Wisk together flour, baking powder and salt. Sift over top of batter and beat gently to combine.
  7. Spoon batter into your greased springform pan, leveling the top with an off set spatula.
  8. Place plum halves on top of the batter with the skin-side up.
  9. Squeeze some lemon juice over the top
  10. Sprinkle with the spiced sugar.Bake for about an hour, until the top is brown and a toothpick come out clean.  I have some more ideas for this cake and for me this is the most interesting part of cooking and baking: using a tried and true recipe as a jumping off point for more exploration. Let me know if you try them:
  • Put the spices and vanilla in the cake and sprinkle the top with lemon sugar ( rub grated lemon rind in the sugar) It will be prettier than using cinnamon in the sugar you sprinkle.
  • Use some almond extract in the batter instead of vanilla. Substitute almond flour for some of the AP flour. This would be good with plums, peaches and apricots. You’d have to play with this. Almond flour will give the cake less structure and is less absorbent than AP flour. It might result in a denser, more buttery cake.
  • Walnuts are also great with plums. Use some ground walnuts in the batter and substitute some walnut oil for the butter. It won’t be a 1-1 ratio. Butter has some water and oil does not. I would suggest using about 2 tablespoons of oil and cutting back the butter to 5 tablespoons. Same caveats as above with substituting almond flour.
  • This cake might work well with apricots as well although apricots are dryer than plums. I’d try poaching them in a soaking syrup with lemon rind and juice just until they soften a bit, then drain them and use the partially cooked apricots. I’d put ginger or almond oil or both in the batter.
  • Sour cherries might be good but you would probably need a bit more sugar on top. Also, cherries are very juicy and for opposite reasons than the apricot, one might need to roast them in the oven for about five minutes and drain them so as to eliminate some of the juice.

Happy exploring!

Julie

Artichokes a la Barigoule (artichokes braised in olive oil)

Posted on by JDL

The first time I ate Artichoke a La Barigoule I was in Chartres visiting a friend and it was she who made it for me.

Sandra was a wonderful cook but definitely ” a pinch of this” and “a handful of that” kind of femme. I have acquired many recipes from her, for example, courgettes stuffed with cheese and Neapolitan style tomato sauce but it always entails watching her cook and rapidly writing everything down because Sandra has everything in her head and she moves fast.

Sadly, I didn’t watch Sandra prepare this dish. How was I to know that I should have been taking notes instead of chatting over a glass of wine? So, after my usual perusal of recipes on the internet and my memories of Sandra’s dish, I came up with a recipe I can share with you. It’s equally good the next day at room temperature. Please picture yourself in a house built of round stones, mortared into a two story cottage. You are seated at a rustic oak table, with your feet on a cool flagstone floor and an oak fire throwing heat into the room. It is September and the fields outside the window are golden. A subtle perfume enters the dining area from bouquets of lavender and thyme that Sandra has bundled and hung from the ceiling. Your plate of Artichoke Barigoule sits in a shallow bowl in front of you with some crusty bread and a glass of the wine you used to braise the artichokes.

Bon Appetit!

Julie

Ingredients:

  • 12 oz small boiling potatoes, mixed color, (little red, Peruvian blues and fingerlings)
  • Two handfuls of short cut carrots or two large carrots
  • 2 stalks of celery, diced small
  • 3/4 lb cooked, uncured, unsmoked ham, (Fra Mani plain or rosemary, Virginia ham or country ham), cut about two inches thick.
  • 8 medium globe artichokes
  • 8 sprigs fresh thyme
  • 2 bay leaves
  • Salt and a few peppercorns
  • 2 large shallots, minced
  • 3T olive oil
  • 2T freshly minced parsley
  • 1/2 cup white wine
  • about two cups of water

Instructions:

  1. Peel potatoes and put in water so they don’t turn brown
  2. Cut ham into bite size chunks and set aside.
  3. Trim artichokes down to the hearts, cut in half and place in acidulated water (lemon) as soon as they are cut. I like to use a serrated knife to cut off the tips of the artichoke and a paring knife to cut out the choke and trim the outside of the heart. You can see in the photo below, starting from the top down, the progression of the prepared hearts, the finished one at the bottom. In this instance, larger artichokes are better because you end up with bigger hearts. These were on the small size.
  4. Sauté shallots and celery in olive oil until translucent but not brown.
  5. Deglaze pan with wine and let it reduce to half.
  6. Cut carrots, artichokes and potatoes so they are about the same thickness, so they all cook for the same amount of time. Add Carrots, thyme, bay leaves, artichoke hearts, potatoes, peppercorns and enough water to come about half way up to the veggies.   Season lightly with salt and bring to a simmer. Cover pan and simmer for about 30 minutes until vegetables are tender.
  7. Place ham in vegetables and heat until warmed through.

Marie-Paule’s Simple Poached Zucchini

Posted on by JDL

Marie-Paule is a minimalist. She uses high quality ingredients and just a few at a time. This recipe is a classic example. It is comprised of zucchini, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. I threw in the tomatoes for color and a bit of parsley for something fresh but neither are necessary. You could use mint as well. I love mint and zucchini.

The quality of the zucchini you use is important. It should be as fresh as possible and firm. I prefer smaller ones as they cook more evenly. The salt and pepper is also important. I like Tellicherry pepper from India. I find it extremely aromatic and a bit spiced. You can play with the sea salt. I like sea salt from the Camargue but you could use another sea salt or perhaps a volcanic salt from Hawaii. You can play with the kind of olive oil but I would recommend extra virgin.

Julie

Ingredients:

  • 1 lb Zucchini
  • 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (I like Badia a Coltibuono)
  • 1/2 lemon
  • Salt
  • Freshly ground pepper
  • 1 tablespoon chopped parsley
  • Handful of cherry tomatoes

Instructions:

  1. Bring to a boil about two quarts of water. Do not trim the the ends of the zucchini as it absorbs water.
  2. Put about 2 teaspoons of sea salt in the water. It will help to keep them green. Place the whole zucchinis into the water and reduce to a simmer. Simmer uncovered until the zucchini is tender, about 7 minutes. You are not looking for al dente.

3. While the zucchini is simmering place the oil, salt, pepper and parsley in the bowl.

4. When the zucchini are done, drain them and cut them in pieces. Place them immediately in the oil. Toss to coat. They will absorb the oil and seasonings better while they are warm and their pores are open. Squeeze the lemon over the zucchini and toss again. Add the tomatoes when the zucchini are room temperature.