Green salad, croutons, vinaigrette

Homemade brioche

Pan-fried broccoli, steamed in white wine

Parmigiano Reggiano

Baked chicken, green salad

Soaked in buttermilk for at least four hours, overnight even better.

Baked 45 minutes at 350℉, plus 15 minutes at 425℉ uncovered to brown.

Green salad, cucumber, pecans, avocado, homemade dressing

A different kind of salad dressing this time. Haystack goat cheese, quality, buttermilk. Seasonings; salt, pepper, nutmeg. 

I like a lot of pepper all over my salad. I like it completely covered in spots. 

Cod, strawberry coulis, green salad

Cod center cut loin, that is how it is marketed anyway, I never heard of such things. Onion relish. Strawberry coulis. Green salad with small seedless Clementine oranges and pecans. Mustard vinaigrette sweetened with the coulis. 

The cod is room temperature, the coulis is chilled. The orange segments in the salad are chilled. The pecans were heated briefly in a pan to activate their oil. 

ARTS !

The cod is poached briefly in a flavorful liquid off the heat, after the liquid is brought to a boil to activate its ingredients. 

Cod poaching liquid:

* 2 cups water

* 15 or so peppercorns

* 1/2 teaspoon fennel seed

* 3 bay leaves

* 1/4 teaspoon hot chile flakes

* 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

* 1/2 juicy lime (sorry, I forgot) 

Heat the seeds in a pot to get them going then add the water and remaining ingredients. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to crumble or cut up the bay leaves since the liquid will not actually be stewing for any great length of time. Let the liquid boil for a few minutes. Remove the pot from the heat source. Add the fish. Observe the fish denature and remove as soon as it is finished. The point is to cook the fish as briefly and gently as possible. 

Strawberry coulis:

* two cups cut fresh strawberries

* 2 level tablespoons cane sugar

* 1/2 juicy lime

Blend the ingredients thoroughly. I didn't bother with straining out the seeds. I think they were completely blended through. I used an emersion blender but a regular blender does the same thing. Most recipes call for 1/4 cup water but I found that unnecessary. Some recipes call for frozen strawberries, some cook the strawberries. This coulis is merely blended. 

Vinaigrette:

* 3 tablespoons olive oil

* 1 tablespoon cider vinegar (or any vinegar you wish)

* 1/2 teaspoon stone ground mustard

* 1 tablespoon strawberry coulis (or strawberry jam, or honey)

* salt and pepper

Onion relish:

* 1 small onion cut thinly

* 3 tablespoons cider vinegar (or any vinegar you wish)

* 2 tablespoon cane sugar

* water to cover

Shake the ingredients in a jar and refrigerate for a few hours. 

Green salad, tomato, avocado, warmed pecans, homemade dressing

Sweetened vinaigrette. 

*  olive oil

*  rice vinegar

*  whole grain mustard with horseradish

*  Colorado clover honey

*  Salt/Pepper

*  Lettuce

*  1/2 Tomato

*  1/2 Avocado

*  Warmed pecans

Green salad with lots of interesting things

ARTS!

1/4 cup olive oil beaten into 1 egg yolk + the usual suspects to round out a dressing,

* whole-grain mustard

* rice vinegar

* honey

* salt & pepper

That is too much obviously, but the volume was determined by the egg yolk. Two tablespoons worth of dressing was removed before the salad components were added, because there is nothing worse, and I mean NUTH'N worse, than too much salad dressing. Possibly a flat tire is worse, but not much is worse. Okay fine. Lots of things are worse than too much salad dressing. Forget I mentioned it.

Green salad, Asian dressing

Where sauce = dressing.

I've been making this dressing, or some version of it, ever since I was a little bitty bouncing boy … twenty-one years of age. Hey, I was a waif, ah-ite?

I couldn't be arsked to measure anything because, numbers, eh, they're not my bag, Man. But if I would break down and measure sometime, say in my dotage carefully reading along scripted instruction, it would turn out like this:

There was about half the dressing remaining in the bowl after I tossed the salad. So this makes an excess for one decent sized salad, and by decent I mean huge, and by huge I mean huge for one person not huge for ten people.

I LOVE those red peppers burnt in a pan. Done in strips with a little oil, it's no problem at all. Takes only a minute. Do not peel, leave the black on for FLAVAH!

As a kid I would have rejected that idea. Burnt, ick. But now as a Western chile-eat'n guy I'm totally cool with it. You have to hand it to those Central Americans and Southwestern EE.UU. Americans, they sure do know how to handle chile peppers and not just the hot ones. This is best done on an open fire but that technique is discouraged by city ordinance and the apartment lease agreement where I live downtown.

The same pan and oil can be used to put a singe on the courgette, zucchini if you like. I prefer to roll it while I'm cutting so the discs come out at irregular angles and with areas of uneven thicknesses on each disc. That is so cool! The result is a tossed and tumbled carefree cut that is thoughtfully achieved.

Speaking of cuts, I lost a chef's knife. Now I ask you, how does one lose an 8" chef's knife? This confounds me completely. Today Melody and I looked e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e for it, even in illogical places. Finally Melody concluded it was accidentally thrown away, and I must say, it's beginning to seem like that must have been what happened. So I bought another one. A much better one.

Oh, I forgot to mention. Cilantro and mint again. That is one great combination there, so great I enhanced it further with double the amount of basil. So the greens in this salad are bib lettuce, I think it's bib, kind of thick for bib, and all those herbs. It's so aromatic you get high just smelling it. Okay, that's a lie, you don't get high, but you do get a lot sweeter. I feel so perfumy with minty-fresh breath. That's my one super power -- minty fresh breath.

Green salad with tuna and black beans

New York steak, green salad

I picked these up on sale. They were like half price. How could I refuse? I should have gotten a dozen -- but whatdaya think, I'm crazy? New York steak set out for an hour to bring to room temperature. Salted on both sides with kosher flake salt. This causes the juices to be drawn to the surface then drawn back to the center of the meat dragging the salt with it. The advantage of this, like brining is the juices, the moisture, tends to stay there. Take care not to over salt because that would be gross. This is one of the reasons why kosher salt is so cool. It facilitates control a little better. There is actually nothing inherently kosher about the salt, it's just that it's used in the preparation of a lot of kosher foods.

Simple olive oil/vinegar dressing. As you can see, I used an entire avocado and tomato, which is a meal in itself and which indicates I'm a total undisciplined hog with no sense of portion control.

Chickpea patty with green salad

To make these patties I used ingredients you'd expect in a regular hummus except I added:

* 1 egg,
* bread crumbs
* jalapeño peppers
* Jamaican jerk
* melted butter

Regular hummus

* chick peas, canned or dried (having been soaked, of course)
* tahini (I used the tahini I made out of sesame seeds with their husks)
* olive oil
* garlic
* lime juice
* S/P

Chicken scallopini

Dressing:

* Vinaigrette with olive oil / rice vinegar
* Sweetened with mirin (sweet saki)
* Dijon style mustard
* 1/2 ring purple onion diced finely
* 1 crushed garlic clove
* salt / pepper

Salad:

* Romaine
* Tomato
* home-made ricotta

Scallopini:

* 1 large chicken breast sliced in thirds
* Dusted with flour with salt / pepper, habanero powder, scant 1/8 teaspoon baking powder
* Sautéed in butter / olive oil
* Cut on board for presentation

Gravy

* butter from sautéing + flower from coating scallopini = roux
* roux + frozen chicken broth cubes = gravy

Catfish filet with green salad

Dressing:

* olive oil
* rice vinegar
* raspberry preserves
* Dijon style mustard
* prepared horseradish
* salt/pepper

Salad:

* romaine
* tomato
* home-made ricotta cheese
* capers

Catfish coating

* flour
* anjo chili powder
* garlic powder
* salt/pepper

Coating to batter

* milk
* whey

Dressing for catfish

* home-made ginger/garlic mayonnaise

The catfish is cut into bite-size bits following the lines of the filet, dredged in the dry flour mixture to help the batter adhere, then milk + whey is added to the flour mixture to suitable thinness and the powdered catfish bits are drenched in the batter. The batter can be lightened with a touch of baking powder but I didn't feel like it tonight.

Salad dressing

Salad dressing:

Imagine you're going to blend vinegar with oil for the simplest of all dressings. In an oversized bowl, drizzle in as much of any type of vinegar your heart desires in the amount you imagine to suffice for the total amount of lettuce, that is, visualize a pile of lettuce in the bowl. If there are four people, imagine four small piles and sprinkle vinegar on your imaginary piles. Anticipate doing the same thing with oil, except first, add whatever other flavor enhancements you think of at that moment, say, something sweet, like honey. Add honey or preserves, or even sugar. Ginger and garlic are good additives too. Mustard is excellent because it's already emulsified so behaves as an emulsifier for the entire batch. Salt and pepper. Think creatively, smash an anchovy to substitute for salt, or use fish sauce to do the same thing, even soy sauce. Then add oil in the manner you added the vinegar. You have the entire world of oils at your calling, just waiting for you to use. Consider walnut oil, peanut oil, sesame oil, olive oil, and many others. Mix them if you wish. A few drops of sesame oil with canola oil for the remainder is an excellent combination. If olive oil is too strong to suit you, dilute it with vegetable oil. Drizzle the oil while whipping, taking care not to add more than you imagine on your own salad or the total amount for all your guests. This takes some intuition. People generally have a tendency to over do it. Which says to me, they have wild imaginations! If you add too much oil, of course your dressing will taste unpleasantly unctuous. This can be corrected by spilling some out and adding an acid, more vinegar, lime, lemon, grapefruit juice, pretty much anything acidic. Correct similarly if you initially added too much vinegar. It's fine to taste before adding the vegetables. In fact, let a guest taste. Just have them stick their finger in there and swipe some, then taste it on their finger. Observe their smile of approval, or their grimace of something having gone wrong.

You imagined lettuce, but of course you're adding a lot more than that, unless you're making a Caesar salad. That was just to help you with the amount of vinegar and oil to add into an oversized gaping empty bowl. Add all the other salad ingredients and toss. If you use your hands you'll be able to feel everything being coated. Don't soak the ingredients. That's awful. If there's a puddle of dressing remaining, then drain it. If there's too much coating the vegetables, then daub it with a paper towel and remove a portion. Maybe reserve a few individual ingredients to put on top. Sometimes, it's useful to season some ingredients individually then add them separately from the rest, like avocado. Don't give people a choice of salad dressings. Instead, have them accept whatever it is you make, or better yet, have one of your guests help you make it and allow them to help in deciding what goes into it. That way, they're invested in success, and you'll always have something different each time because you'll never be able to replicate what you did precisely because you weren't measuring, and you won't have any of those God awful prepared commercial dressing bottles rattling around in your refrigerator door. Com'on, be a sport. Give it a go.

Oh yeah, those are re-heated venison meatballs up there ^^^ put on top of bruschetta topping. See what I did there? Put the topping for something else on the bottom. How's that for being an iconoclastic food preparer, eh? Shredded cheese, the name of which I forgot, but it's some kind of imported sheep's cheese, and it's fantastic. The broccoli was added to the salad because it went cold by the time I got around to it. The Merlot was warm so I put ice cubes in the glass which promptly melted.

Do you know in ancient Rome it was scandalous to not mix your wine with water? You were considered an incorrigible undisciplined hopelessly heavy drinker if you failed to add water. People would whisper, "... and do you know he doesn't even mix water with his wine?" Then the person being told that would roll their eyes and tut.

Green salad

Chicken scallopini

Salad with yellow pepper, apple, tomato, and Romaine.

Dressing: rice vinegar, vegetable, Dijon style mustard, ginger powder, garlic powder, sugar.