Tag Archives: food

Spinach, Fennel, and Pear Salad with Brown Butter Hazelnuts

3 May

Do you ever wonder what makes the perfect salad?  Not really?  Just me?  I’ve thought long and hard about this—because that’s what I do, my friends, I think about salad—and I have to say that the elements that make a perfect salad, though constantly evolving, are almost always related to one magical element: texture.

Sure, flavor counts (obviously), but I think a salad’s texture will make or break it faster than the time it takes to swallow your first bite.  No matter how good a salad might taste, I find that, if the greens are soggy, the vegetables limp, or the various add-ons mushy or pasty, it takes a bit of effort to make each bite go down.  This is, of course, no scientific study I am undertaking here, but just a very personal observation.  And since I eat a lot of salad, I’d like to think that my established findings on the quality of salad-making hold at least a bit of weight.  Even if they don’t, I have good news for you.  I think I just made a salad with the most pleasing texture I have ever encountered.

Crisp spinach paired with crunchy-thin slices of fresh fennel provide a lovely base.  Perfectly ripe pears, so juicy and perfumed, counter the crispness of the spinach and fennel.  Toasted hazlenuts, flavored with a smidge of sea salt and brown butter to make their nuttiness even more forward, accent the crunch of the salad, but also pair perfectly with the pears.  A light vinaigrette drizzled over everything provides a punch of fruity acidity and, though I am aware that I have now started naming attributes that don’t concern texture, I don’t even know how to stop talking about how much I love this salad.  Sure, it’s true that I like almost all salad, but this salad?  This is a salad that everyone will like.

Last Year: Ya Hala’s Hummus This is, hands down, the best hummus you’ll ever eat

Spinach, Fennel, and Pear Salad with Brown Butter Hazelnuts Recipe

½ cup whole hazelnuts

1 large fennel bulb, green fronds and core removed

juice of 1 lemon

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

large pinch of coarse sea salt

5 ounces spinach leaves, washed and dried

1 large ripe pear

Apple Cider Vinaigrette

juice of ½ a lemon

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

1 tablespoon unfiltered apple cider

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  Arrange hazelnuts on a baking sheet, then toast in oven for 10 to 15 minutes, until the skins of the nuts begin to peel loose and the nuts appear dark golden brown.  Remove the nuts to a clean dishtowel, then wrap the towel around the nuts and allow to sit for a couple of minutes.  Then, with your hands, vigorously rub the hazelnuts in the dishtowel to remove the hazelnut skins.  Coarsely chop the de-skinned nuts (cutting them in half is just fine—you want nice big bites here), then set aside.

Slice the fennel to be as thin as possible, using either a mandoline or an extremely sharp knife.  In a medium bowl, combine the fennel slices and the lemon juice, tossing to coat all the fennel in the lemon juice.  Set aside.

In a small pan, heat the butter over medium heat.  Allow the butter to melt, then foam, then begin to sputter.  Stirring and watching the butter the whole time, allow it to turn a nutty dark brown.  Immediately pour the browned butter into a small bowl, then add the hazelnuts and toss to combine.  Add the pinch of sea salt and toss some more.

To make the dressing, whisk together the lemon juice, vinegar, and apple cider.  Drizzle in the olive oil, whisking all the while to combine until the dressing is thick and emulsified.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Place the spinach in a large bowl.  Core and slice the pear into thin slices, then add the pears to the spinach.  Pour the fennel, with any lemon juice remaining in the bowl, on top of the pears.  Give the hazelnuts in brown butter a bit of a stir, then add half of the nuts to the salad.  Pour half of the dressing over the salad, then toss to combine evenly.  Taste the salad to see if you desire more dressing.  Add as much dressing as you deem fit (some people like more dressing, some like less, so I am leaving the finished amount up to personal taste).  Serve the salad with the remaining hazelnuts sprinkled over the top of each serving.

Makes 4 very large servings, or 8 side salads.

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Crisp Baked Vegetable Wontons

30 Apr

Tiny foods are the best.  Tiny sandwiches, tiny muffins, tiny cookies, tinier than average samosas, tiny, two-ingredient crackers—really, I could go on and on about my love of tiny foods.  The fondness knows no bounds.

But what to make of the fact that making tiny foods can oftentimes seem like a never-ending, cumbersome task?  There’s no way around it.  When you choose to make 36 tiny sandwiches instead of 8 normal-sized sandwiches, you’re going to have to put in some extra time.  But I am all right with that.

Maybe it’s because I am soothed by being in the kitchen, but the task of filling or folding or forming dozens of tiny little foodstuffs has never bothered me.  Truth be told, it can sometimes bother my back and neck (because no matter how much I mentally enjoy the repetitive motion of forming little cookies, standing upright with my head pointed down at a work surface is not the most forgiving posture), but that’s small price to pay for feeling so mentally sound at the end of a long marathon of cooking or baking.

Most importantly, however, is the fact that waiting for you at the end of your cooking trials is something delicious to eat.  When I made these delightful little wontons, filled with carrots, mushrooms, and cabbage, and perfectly seasoned with ginger and mirin, I took that thought to heart.  No, really.  To test the recipe, I made a half batch of crispy, crunchy wontons, and then, when they emerged from the oven, I proceeded to then eat them all.  Every single last one of them.  At first I felt sort of sheepish about what I had done, but I soon got over it.  They were delicious, I took the time to make them, so why shouldn’t I get to enjoy them?  Up until now, however, my husband and son were unaware of what they missed when I made these, because I never told them that I made them.  It was a stealth recipe test.  “Was” being the operative word here, because now, having admitted to the world (and my husband) what I did, I must make amends and whip up another batch of wontons for everyone.  And I do not mind one bit.

Baked Vegetable Wontons Recipe

Adapted from The Healthy Kitchen, by Andrew Weil and Rosie Daley

2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil

1 cup finely shredded carrot

1 cup finely chopped mushrooms (the original recipe called for shiitake or oyster mushrooms, but I used much more reasonably-priced cremini mushrooms and they were great)

2 cups finely shredded Napa or savoy cabbage

½ cup chopped scallions

2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger

2 tablespoons mirin

2 tablespoons soy sauce

24-30 small, square wonton wrappers

¼ cup toasted sesame oil, for brushing the wontons

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a large skillet, heat the 2 tablespoons of toasted sesame oil over medium heat.  Add the carrots, mushrooms, and cabbage and sauté until limp, about 5 minutes.  Add the scallions and ginger and cook for another 1 minute.  Stir in the mirin and soy sauce, and remove from heat.

Lay out 12 wonton sheets at a time.  With a pastry brush, lightly brush toasted sesame oil all along the edges of the wonton sheets.  Drop about 1 tablespoon of the vegetable mixture just a touch off the center of the diagonal middle of each wonton sheet, then fold the sheet diagonally so the opposite corners touch.  Using the tines of a fork, press down the 2 open sides (these would be the non-folded sides) of the triangle.  Fold in the two pointed edges that jut out from the folded sides of the triangle, and press them in place with the fork.  Brush the tops of each completed wonton with a bit more sesame oil.

Very lightly spray or brush a baking sheet with vegetable oil.  Arrange the completed wontons, about 12 at a time, on the baking sheet.  Bake wontons for 6 minutes, then turn them over and return to the oven to bake for an additional 6 minutes, or until the wontons are dark golden brown and very crisp.

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How to Make Homemade Croutons

26 Apr

Among the many food items that are not only easy to make at home, but also always, always better when made at home rather than purchased from a store, I’d have to place croutons in the top 5.  It’s not that I eat a lot of croutons, but when I see someone buying a huge bag of dried bread that has been dusted with strange laboratory-conceived flavorings, I just want to stop that person, place a hand on his or her shoulder, and say, “Drop the bag.  There’s a better way.”

I know, I know.  You don’t have a lot of time.  You work a lot, and when you get home, you don’t want to spend a lot of time crouton-ing it up when you would rather be…I don’t even know what to put here, because making croutons at home is just about as effortless as it gets.  Most of the time spent on these croutons is taken up by baking time, and during that baking time you can make a salad to accompany your croutons, slice up a bunch of stuff to pile into a fantastic panzanella with these croutons, or beat together a few eggs and other fillings to fold over these croutons and cook into a frittata.

You can take leftover croutons to work to make a bowl of microwaved soup into something truly special.  If you’re looking for a semi-fancy snack, nibble on some of these croutons, paired with apple slices, and ditch your regular mid-day work snack of over-salted packaged nuts with off-brand M&Ms.  Or just alternate bites of crouton with bites of grape tomato and pretend that you are eating  outside in a Mediterranean garden (instead of inside, under fluorescent lights, while the never ending pitter-pat of keyboard typing plays the soundtrack to your life).  25 minutes, start to finish, and these croutons, with any number of pairings, can be yours.

Last Year: Indian Chicken Kebabs (this is one of my favorite dishes, and it contains one of my favorite stories about being in India)

Big and Crunchy Herb and Chèvre Croutons Recipe

8 ounces rustic bread, cut into large 1-inch cubes

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 large clove of garlic, finely diced and mashed into a paste

4 ounces chèvre

1 heaping tablespoon chopped fresh herb of your choice (rosemary, thyme, or tarragon would work well here—I used tarragon and it was divine)

½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

salt to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  Spray or brush a large baking sheet with a bit of olive oil, then set aside.

Place bread cubes in a large bowl.  In a small saucepan, melt butter with olive oil over medium heat.  Add garlic, and allow to cook only slightly, until the garlic becomes fragrant (about 20 seconds).  Remove from heat, then stir in chèvre, herbs, black pepper, and salt.  Stir until the ingredients are combined and the cheese has melted.

Pour the cheese mixture over the bread cubes, and toss to combine evenly, until all the bread is coated.  Place bread cubes in a single layer on prepared baking sheet.  Bake in center of oven for 18-20 minutes, until the croutons are golden brown and crisp.

Eat on a salad, fold into a frittata, make into panzanella, or place on top of soup.  Never buy croutons again.

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