Posts by: Andrew Cohen
This dish can be eaten hot or room temperature, as an appetizer or as a light main dish with a salad or soup. You can use other greens in this as well, such as arugula or spinach, and it is a great way to use greens that look less than perfect. If you do not have leeks, use onion. Garlic cloves can substitute for green garlic. The scamorza is a type of smoked mozzarella. If you do not have it, just use regular mozzarella and add Pimenton de la Vera, or smoked paprika from Spain.
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Pesto is a wonderful complement to roasted cauliflower. This recipe calls for thin shreds of carrots added to the pesto for a little hit of crunch and sweetness, but the recipe is great without the shreds if you do not have the time to prep the carrot shreds. Whatever nuts you use in the pesto would be the nuts to use to garnish this dish.
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The part of this dish that takes the longest is making the carrot sauce, and that should take no more than 20-25 minutes. Halibut is used here, but feel free to substitute any firm fish.
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Carrot Sauce v.1 is a sauce made with carrot juice that is reduced to a syrup almost. This recipe continues the “vegetable as sauce” motif I am fond of, but is made from whole carrots and is thicker and less intense. Although this was originally conceived to go with seared fish or chicken, it is excellent with very thick spears of grilled asparagus. A drizzle of balsamic vinegar reduction and/or thinned pesto would be great with this.
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“Condiment”? Well, it isn’t a pesto, nor is it a “salsa verde”. If you look up the word you will find this fits perfectly, as this mélange is something to give a particular flavor to, or to complement a dish. Here, the cilantro acts as a foil to the earthy sweet flavor of the roasted cauliflower, and the carrots help to point up the sweetness and adds a textural counterpoint.
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This salad could be a starter salad, or would be good as part of a lunch on a warm day with grilled chicken. At dinner, this would be a great way to bridge a salad and dessert course, or could come before the cheese in lieu of dessert. This is a very simple recipe, but that is so the flavors of each ingredient shines through. It may seem odd to use lettuce, but the faintly bitter and mineral-y flavor and the gentle crunch of the butter lettuce is a great foil to the sweetness and texture of the berries. If you wanted to add something to the salad, some chopped roasted almonds, pistachios, or hazelnuts would work with the sweet nutty flavor adding a bottom note to the ensemble.
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Tagged with: blueberries • creamy • dessert • dressing • meat • melon • mint • salad • shrimp • strawberries
This condiment is like a cross between a pesto and a dressing. It was made to go with roasted slabs of cauliflower will work with meaty fish and chicken as well. Tweaking the spices, like adding a little cumin and turmeric will take this to the middle-east or North Africa. Add more cumin and some green chilies and you have a good match with South West or Mexican cuisine. Add some radish dice and lime juice and this would be perfect for tacos.
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Although you can buy things called balsamic reductions, or balsamic condiment or glaze, all over the place now, a good many of them are made with inferior, or downright lousy, balsamic vinegar, or not even true balsamic vinegar. A lot of them have caramel, sugar, or other things added to them. Some of these things are for flavoring, others are to thicken.
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A classic pairing in cuisine is red beets with tarragon. It makes sense, then, that chervil, with its lighter tarragon/licorice/anise-like flavor would also make a good combo. The sweetness from the carrots and the chervil will bring out the sweet flavor of the beets and accentuate the sweet and bitter qualities of the romaine.
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This dish is pretty simple. The trickiest part is mounting the sauce with butter and not breaking the sauce. This is easily avoided by simply paying attention and pulling the pan from the heat while adding (mounting) the butter, returning it to the heat if the pan cools too much. The sauce is a little tart and goes well with the fish. By not turning the fish before putting it in the oven the fish will develop a very crisp crust on the top, which is a perfect foil to the buttery sauce. White pepper is used in the sauce because it looks better, and the flavor is better suited to the sauce.
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Part of the appeal of this dish is the gentle seasoning so the flavors of the ingredients stand on their own. Blanching the garlic mitigates the heat, but leaves behind the wonderful garlic flavor. If you have green garlic, that would be great in lieu of the garlic. Simply cut it into ribbons as wide as the leeks and cook it the same. For the stock, you want a very light vegetable stock, preferably homemade.
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This dressing goes with the Romaine, Roast Beets, and Carrot Thread salad, but will go with roasted beets anytime. This would also be nice on fennel roasted pork loin, grilled salmon, or ground chicken meatballs. With the chervil in it, it is not a dressing that would keep a long time. Use within 3-4 days, although letting it sit a couple hours before using allows time for the chervil flavor to express itself.
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This salad also features an oregano infused olive oil and calls for optional quickled red spring onions. The dressing has some fennel seed powder to echo the shaved fennel. You want to use a Ben Riner or other fixed blade slicer for this.
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Tagged with: fennel • lettuce • little gem lettuce • Meyer lemon • oregano • quickles • red spring onions • salad
The carrot top “pesto” isn’t really that pesto-ish to my mind as there is no garlic in it, or basil, but there you have it. Roasting the carrots on sprigs of oregano will give them a lighter aroma and flavor than chopping the herbs and putting it all over the carrots, and this way the more delicate topping will come through without interference. Serving these carrots on sautéed spinach will point up the sweetness of the carrots, but is entirely optional as the carrots are fine on their own.
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This oil is originally for a Provençal inspired shaved fennel salad, but has many other uses. Once made it will keep in the refrigerator for a week or two before the flavor starts to drop off.
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This dressing is for a shaved fennel salad, but the fennel would make this a nice dressing to top grilled fish or pork chops. You could make the fennel salad without the lettuce and use this dressing with it for topping the aforementioned.
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A favorite ice cream flavor of mine growing up was mandarin chocolate. When I started cooking I figured out what the “mandarin” part was and have played with those flavors in other things since then. Here is another dish inspired by those excursions. This recipe lists carrot, but they can be omitted if you choose. They are a good companion to fennel as they have sweetness to match the aroma of fennel and they have an earthiness that helps ground the fennel, onion, and orange juice.
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Not truly a pesto, but as it is close, and it is in the same spirit of “cucina povera” that true pesto was invented in, why not call it a pesto? No basil or pine nuts, but oregano and almonds stand in. Garlic could easily overwhelm this, but if you decide to give it a go, try using only half a small clove of peeled and de-germed garlic. Use this on roast carrots, sautéed mushrooms, or with cappelinni pasta.
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The “dressing” is fairly chunky, and could be considered a condiment as well. This salad makes a nice side to grilled fish or chicken, or you can omit the lettuce and use the dressed radishes as a topping for something.
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Tagged with: butter lettuce • Italian parsley • lettuce • Meyer lemon • mint • radishes • salad • shallots
This dish pairs roast carrots, which develop a sweet flavor combined with a rooty depth, with a bright compound butter which features chervil (which has a flavor like tarragon, but lighter) spiked with some Meyer lemon, or not as you choose. The fennel see on the carrots will add layers of flavor to the dish and will support the chervil in the butter. As the fennel seed roasts it will take on a nutty flavor as well.
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This dressing delivers a dressing full of smoky garlic flavor without the heat of clove garlic. Once the season for green garlic is past, you could grill thin leeks and a clove or two garlic instead for a good alternative. As well as topping sautéed or grilled vegetables, it will complement salads of sturdy lettuces like romaine and things like escarole, endive, and radicchio.
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This butter will have a light anise/licorice/tarragon flavor to it, and is good for poultry, light meats, fish and seafood, and vegetables. It is perfect for adding to a pan of mussels or shrimp at the end, or slipping frozen slices under the skin of a chicken to be roasted. You can use this butter to make a “buerre blanc” – a sauce of shallots, wine or vinegar, and bits of cold vinegar swirled into a pan to form an emulsification.
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This is a nice and light dish with bright flavors. If you have green garlic, be sure to use some of that in the filling. Button mushrooms will work fine in lieu of oyster mushrooms, but avoid shiitake as they will take over the dish.
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Tagged with: chard • egg • green garlic • herbs • leeks • Meyer lemon • mushrooms • oyster mushrooms • pasta
Definitely a fusion dish drawing on India and Southeast Asia for inspiration, with some pure California thrown in as well.
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Tagged with: carrots • cilantro • curry • leeks • mei quin choi • Meyer lemon • mushrooms • nuts • oyster mushrooms • shiitake mushrooms • tofu
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