Sometimes it all comes together....

This was one of those moments when it all worked at once... gotta revel in them as they just don't come that often!
Our Produce department has these Atuolfo Mangoes on sale, also sometimes called "Champagne", and my assignment is to promote them. Ok, that's easy, is there anything more delicious than fresh and really ripe mangoes? However, as my boss says, a monkey could sell mangoes. Let's make it interesting.
I checked out Epicurious.com  (I love Epicurious. Love them.) and found a recipe for a curried salad made with quinoa, mangoes & English cucumbers, made it up, played with it, tasted it, played with it some more... I love my job.
Anyhow, this was one of those recipes that even my customers who are "grab and go" (Do they really think that if they make eye contact I can steal a chunk of their soul?) would take a bite, stop in their tracks and come back for the recipe. So, here it is, my revised version of Curried Mango and Quinoa Salad. It's Vegan, Gluten Free, and low fat. It's also easy to make and easy to serve, lends itself to all kind of variations and can be either a meal or a side dish.

Curried Mango Quinoa Salad

Ingredients

• 1 ½ cups quinoa
• 1/3 Cup olive oil
• 1/2 cup Champagne vinegar
• 3 heaping tablespoons mango chutney (“hot” mango if you want a good kick, or do half and half)
• (approx) 2 tablespoons curry powder
• (approx) 1 tablespoon dry mustard

• 1 1/2 cup chopped peeled Champagne mangoes; about 2-3 (See a theme here?)
• 1 cup minced unpeeled English hothouse cucumber
• ¼ cup minced green onions or scallions
• baby spinach for base of salad

Preparation

Cook quinoa in medium pot of boiling lightly salted water until tender but still firm to bite, stirring occasionally,  until the white “curl” reveals itself; about 12 minutes. Drain well and transfer to shallow bowl. Let it cool.

Whisk together the oil, vinegar, & chutney, and add curry & mustard powder in small increments to blend. Taste for preferences. Correct seasonings, and add salt and pepper, if desired.

Add chopped mango, cucumber, green onions, and mix well. Add dressing to quinoa; toss to coat. Divide spinach between 4 plates. Spoon the quinoa salad over plated spinach. Garnish with mango chunks if desired, and serve with chilled Chardonnay.

I like a strong curry taste, and a bit of cayenne to give it some heat with the sweet, so seasonings can be adjusted for personal tastes.

As a side dish instead of as a perfect summer salad, this is an excellent accompaniment for grilled striped bass or swordfish, which can be marinated in a bit of the chutney used for the dressing.

To chop a mango:
Cut mango in half lengthwise, slicing around the pit. Cut a half-inch grid into flesh of each half. Using your thumbs, push up skin side so cubes stick out. Slice off cubes at base.

Enjoy!! 

Pork Medallions with Mushroom Sauce

I'll elaborate on this demo later; right now I just want to fall into bed (if I can move the cats and dog over enough to make room for me!)
My assignment was a marinated pork tenderloin from a company called DuBreton; you can read about their products in either French or English. They produce a really high quality organic pork on their farms in Quebec.
I didn't want to just roast the tenderloins, although they are really delicious, but offer something a little different. This is a recipe for Pork Loin Medallions in a really simple and versatile mushroom sauce... which you can change and adjust to suit your own tastes. I like this following version with rosemary.

PORK MEDALLIONS with MUSHROOM SAUCE
ingredients:
Pork Tenderloin (1-1.5 lbs), sliced into 1" thick rounds, "medallions". I like the DuBreton Sun Dried Tomato Marinated, it adds a richness to the dish.
butter or butter substitute for sauteeing (I like Earth Balance Soy Free spread)
1 small onion, minced
1 cup "Baby Bella" mushrooms, sliced thinly
2 cloves minced garlic
1 tsp dried rosemary, crushed
1 - 2 tbsp flour (I like brown rice flour; it's safe for the gluten intolerant, thickens beautifully and is less likely to clump than wheat flour)
1 cup Chicken Stock (or more, if your loin was larger)
salt & pepper to taste

Preparation:
Melt about 1 tbsp butter in heavy saute pan; and quickly brown the medallions on both sides, about 2 minutes per side. Remove from pan onto plate, and add another tbsp butter to pan. Saute mushrooms, onions and garlic just until soft, then add rosemary, flour, salt and pepper and scrape pan well, slowly adding chicken stock and bring to a simmer for about 3 minutes. Add the medallions back to the pan, on top of the sauce, cover and simmer for about 10 minutes, or until pan juices aren't pink anymore. The center of each medallion should retain just a hint of pink colour... overcooking will dry them out, which is a shame. These are wonderful on a bed of rice pilaf with some haricots verts fines for colour.

If you have an aversion to rosemary, you can use any one of a number of other herbs, including tarragon, marjoram or thyme... this sauce is also really nice with a touch of a dry white wine, or you can use marsala. Warning: Marsala will change the flavour pretty drastically. I'd stick to the white wine.

The entire meal takes about 20 minutes. Start the Pilaf first, while it's steaming get the medallions going and then when they are covered and doing their simmering thing, steam or pan saute the haricots. Everything should be ready at the same time. Warning... do NOT leave the kitchen while making this meal! Seriously, things will stick and burn. You have 20 minutes and 20 minutes only, from the minute the rice hits the boiling water until you're ready to plate and serve.
Enjoy!

St Louis, here I come...

OK, it's almost 11:30 & I still haven't finished packing. Dog is complaining outside, as I am making him ENJOY THE SUNSHINE. Damn, I'm mean. Off to judge for the Bull Terrier Club of St Louis Specialty on Sunday. Just a a flying visit, but I'm certainly wondering about bringing some of that famous St Louis beef back home. Is it cold enough in the cargo area to keep it fresh?? Hopefully I'll get to sample some Midwestern cooking while I'm there. I remember going to a pretty astonishing Steakhouse the only other time I was in St Louis. We're talking BEEF here. Also the trip to the St Louis Zoo was an eyeopener. I hear that there's a Frederick Olmsted Park in St Louie that puts Boston's Emerald Necklace to shame. OK... maybe showering, packing and cleaning the catboxes would be a better use of my time than blogging. Or not. :-)

Baby Back Ribs.. or white Yankee girls CAN cook 'Q!

Love this recipe; it's easy, it gets a minimum number of dishes dirty, and once it's in the oven, you walk away and deal with the rest of your life. Cooking time is highly variable, depending on the afore-mentioned life!

Ingredient List:
Pork Baby Back Ribs - Figure about 1 1/2 pounds of ribs per person; most of that weight is bone and you'll be throwing it out.
Salt
Pepper
Minced dried Onion
DennyMike's Mesquito Madness 'Q Sauce
12 oz or more of a substantial beer. I like Anchor Steam.

Preheat oven to 325. Pat the racks of ribs dry, and lay them flat in a roasting pan. Cut them to fit if necessary, but they need to be touching the bottom of the pan. Season with salt, pepper, and minced dried onion, then drizzle a flask of DennyMike's Mesquito Madness BBQ Sauce generously over the racks. I use about 1/2 flask for every two racks. Drizzle a bit of beer over the racks, without washing off the seasonings, then pour the rest into the bottom of the pan, so it's about 1/2" deep. Cover tightly with foil, place in oven and ignore for a minimum of 3, but preferably 5 hours.

For a really satisfying meal, serve cornbread and baked beans along with the ribs, as well as a green salad to cut the weight of the meal. I use 365 Traditional Baked Beans, baked right next to the ribs, uncovered. I add some brown sugar, mustard powder and black pepper to season them up a bit.
This is an ideal meal for busy people on a day when you're home, but are trying to catch up with all the household chores, the bills, driving kids here, there, and everywhere... it can go in the oven at whatever time is convenient, will sit there while you run to the bank, the post office, the dump... ballet rehearsals, softball games, and even get out long enough to run with the dog. If you want to start at 8 am, you can pull it at 10, then shove it back in the oven to finish at 4:00 so you can serve dinner at 7:00. Whatever works for you. And, the leftovers are awesome.

Valentine's Day festival of food

Assigned demos for the sweethearts' holiday from the meat department were Cornish Game Hens... easy to cook, easy to screw up, and not necessarily a big favorite ("there are too many bones!" "What is that, a BABY chicken?" etc, etc)

Add to this the ever present question of trying to keep hot food hot for a four to five hour demo, without drying it out, of course, and here's a conundrum. Oh wait... then there's Meat, wanting their product to be the center of attention, customers wanting to be able to buy it already cooked (Wait, that makes it another department's) and the store insisting that we are doing demos as "Try It To Buy It"... please, how do you make everyone happy?
OK, how's this? Use store branded Apricot Preserves, (Grocery) and melt it into a glaze with a bit of Earth Balance Non-Soy Butter Substitute (Dairy) and a healthy fistful of crushed fresh rosemary from  Produce. Stuff the birds with, and lay them on a bed of, Wild Rice Pilaf from Prepared Food. Baste generously with the glaze, and cook the birds for the full 50 minutes needed to get them up to 165F, then cover half of them with foil & leave in the warm oven. Plate up for demo with Bakehouse Baguettes (Bakery) with a bit of perfectly ripe Fromager D'Affinois (Specialty) and the only Team I've left out is Seafood. If they'd given me the lobster I asked for, I'd have figured out a way to use it. Two hundred and forty-nine pounds of CGH in four days. We'd have sold more if we hadn't run out. Also, not a single scrap of prepared rice pilaf in the store, and there was a gaping hole in the shelf where the Apricot Preserves live. Whew.

9 March 2011

Food, food glorious food... today I'm finishing up the assigned demos with a demo for the local TAZA Chocolate Company, of Somerville MA. They're a bit of a Horatio Alger story; were horrifically damaged by the floods last year, but have rebuilt and are back in business. Instead of the obvious, I've broken out a recipe from Chocolate Fest last year; an amazing Sicilian Ragout from the blog FX Cuisine taken from a 19th Century Sicilian Cookbook. Love this website; this guy is THOROUGH. Want to know how to make an authentic Bolognese, or Pressed Duck? Got three days? Here's the disclaimer: "The reason you can't do it at home is the Presse à Canard, a duck crusher that you would pay thousands of dollars if only you could find one for sale."

Here's the recipe... the garlic and cayenne are my "modern" additions. I like a lot of cayenne; love the afterburn that doesn't disguise that first mouthful of chocolate, cinnamon and red wine. I used a Severino fresh cavatelli. It does a magnificent job of trapping the sauce.

SICILIAN RAGU WITH CHOCOLATE & CINNAMON

1 large onion
1tsp minced garlic
2 Tbsp Olive Oil
2 lbs ground beef
8 oz red wine
12 oz Tomato Puree
3 oz bitter dark chocolate, chopped
2 sticks of cinnamon
ground red cayenne to taste
ground black pepper to taste
salt to taste

DIRECTIONS

Peel and finely chop it the onion. Saute the chopped onion in a heavy-bottomed pot with a little oil. When soft, add ground beef, and sauté over high heat, mixing constantly. Brown the meat all over. You need enough surface and heat, or the meat will render its juice, lowering the heat and making any further browning impossible. If this happens, remove half the onion-meat mixture and sauté in two installments. The browning is an important part of the flavor base. With the heat still on high, add the red wine and let it bubble and the alcohol evaporate. Scratch the bottom of the pot with your spoon to dissolve any browned bits stuck to the pot.
Add the tomato purée, then the chocolate. Let the chocolate melt, and mix. Add the cinnamon sticks, pushing down into the sauce. Cinnamon is a very common ingredient in Sicilian meat ragù and a clear oriental influence on Sicilian cuisine. Add cayenne, black pepper & salt to taste. Cover and simmer on a very low flame for at least 40 minutes. Serve over pasta, with Parmigiana Reggiano.

I've got 21 months of recipes and food items to catch up on... happy eating!