I would have told you all about this cheese BEFORE Christmas if I’d known I could find it. I’d have told you to do your best to BUY this cheese and serve it sometime over the holidays. I had it a couple of months ago at a wine/cheese/dinner event and asked about it. A kind wait staff person found the label back in the kitchen and brought it to me. Then a day or two before Christmas I found it at Costco. Happy camper was I. EVERY one of our guests who tried this went nuts over it. It’s an English cheese from the Wensleydale Creamery in Hawes (Yorkshire Dales). It’s called “Yorkshire Wensleydale Cheese with Cranberries.” It’s a semi-dry cheddar, but not sharp at all. It’s almost crumbly if you try to slice it too thin or too quickly. But oh, the flavor. And with the cranberries. Wonderful. Our Costco doesn’t have it anymore – we even made a 2nd trip to find more. All gone. Now I’ll have to try to find it through another source. Wonder if it’s a seasonal variety – - with the cranberries? According to the creamery’s website, they also make similar cheeses with apricots, one with pineapple and yet another with onions/chives. I read a recipe on the site, using this cheese, for a Wensleydale Cranberry Cheese dip. I’m smitten.

A year ago: Chocolate Citrus Almond Torte GF

Good friends of ours, Lynn & Sue, often exchange dinners with us. We’ve been doing it for years, and always enjoy their company whether it’s at our house or theirs. Sue’s a very good cook, so we have great conversations about food and about choir/church. Lynn and Dave have guy talk – about wine, travel, and choir/church. They’re both 2nd tenors. Sue and I are both 2nd altos. The day I’m writing this [over a week ago] we just sang our little hearts out for Reformation Sunday. Our choir, which has now swelled to about 140, and may be up to 150 starting next week, was a significant part of our church service, with the help of a brass ensemble multiple drums and flute, guitar, organ, piano and a synthesizer. It was gorgeous music – both to sing and hear. We sang some of the old hymns that I know nearly by heart – Great is Thy Faithfulness, for one.

Normally I don’t use my blog as a venue for discussing my faith, but I just had to share a bit about my Christian music life. Anyway, Sue & Lynn invited us for dinner that night, even though we didn’t get home from singing completely through two services, until about 12:30 pm. I’d offered to bring a couple of things, though, to make it easier on Sue. We do that generally, the guest brings something and a bottle of wine.

I’d given Sue a list of options of things I’d thought about making, and she chose two of them. But then Lynn started joking about a dinner I fixed one night a year or so ago when I made tabbouli salad, but instead of bulgur wheat, it was made with cauliflower. I didn’t tell any of the guests what was in it. Lynn, who professes to dislike cauliflower in most forms, liked it a lot. Then I told him what was in it. He’s never forgotten that I like to slip some in under his radar.

So, of course, I had to find some kind of cauliflower appetizer. Where he wouldn’t have a clue. It’s a kind of game we play. I couldn’t find much except some Indian-type ones making roasted cauliflower, flavored with Indian spices, which sounded more like a side vegetable anyway. But baking cauliflower florets would be much too obvious. Had to find something with camouflage. So this is the one. Found it on the internet, although it was a very oddball website and I’m not going to link to it. Besides, I changed the recipe, so it’s not really anybody else’s anymore. It was called a pate so I figured I could get away with serving it to Lynn, telling him it is a bean pate.

It’s really a dip – and contains many of the usual ingredients for one – like cream cheese (light), and sour cream (light). But then it veered off in another direction:  hardboiled eggs, an onion, a small quantity of cannellini beans, and some cooked cauliflower. The seasonings are mild – salt, pepper, curry and parsley. As a matter of fact, the online recipe I found called it curried cauliflower pate, but the recipe didn’t contain any curry. I added curry powder and also lime juice because it needed just a little something to zip it up some. And I’d probably add even more curry powder, but didn’t want to overwhelm the palates of us all. I used less beans, less sour cream, less cream cheese, and MORE cauliflower. The online recipe contained butter, but I left it out.

I served it with some veggies and pita chips. along with a second appetizer too (an almond dip, which I’ll post in a day or so). A Greek type one based on skordalia, the Greek sauce made with baked potato. More on that one later. I also took a Roasted Sweet Potato, Black Bean and Red Bell Pepper Salad with a jalapeno dressing, which was really good (I posted that one last week). Very international menu, based on what I was bringing! Sue made a delish Mexican baked chicken dish with tomatoes, sour cream, avocado and a tomatillo sauce. And a very nice spinach, apple and pomegranate salad. Oh yes, and for dessert we had pieces of Julia Child’s chiffon pumpkin pie that I thought was fabulous. She’s going to give me the recipe.

So, you want to know how it went? Lynn tried both dips and didn’t say much at first. He then pointed to the skordalia dip and said “now, you didn’t slip some cauliflower in this one, did you?” Honestly, I could say with great laughter, “no, no cauliflower.” Sue asked him how he liked the other dip, this pate, and he said great. Liked it. We all did. When I told him it WAS cauliflower, he didn’t believe me. We all laughed and nearly finished the bowl. It was good. Not like a meat-based one (like clams) or a very major veggie one (like caramelized onions or artichokes) – in this one you really cannot taste or feel cauliflower. I liked the curry hint to it – it might not be to everyone’s taste. I liked the texture. And it’s fairly low cal and low fat.

A year ago: Pork Tenderloin with Cherry Grape Sauce

Cheese Ball. Brings back memories for me of nearly every celebratory party of the 1960’s. Nearly every cook made a cheese ball. They went out of fashion, for sure. But they’re actually quite good, and it took going to a cooking class with Cathy Thomas (the food editor of our local  newspaper, the Orange County Register), to try an updated version.

I was all over this cheese ball with a hint of curry powder in it. The sharp cheddar plays a minor role here, although you do know there’s a sharper cheese in it. But it’s the toppings that set this apart. The mango chutney, the toasted coconut (unsweetened), toasted pecans, green onions and dried cranberries. No 1960 cheese ball ever had that kind of stuff on it. Cathy served this cheese ball with water crackers, but the star accompaniment is slices of apple. That’s a marriage made in heaven.

And, did I tell you this recipe is EASY? Really. The cheese ball itself is made in the food processor (cream cheese, sharp cheddar and curry powder). And you form it into a disk shape (mine was more round there in the picture, I’d advise making a flatter type, so more of the toppings will stay on the top). It’s chilled for awhile. Then you make the toppings – I toasted the pecans and the unsweetened coconut together, although the coconut will toast faster, so it might be better to do them separately.

You chop up some green onions (including the green tops) and dried cranberries (I chopped them because sometimes they’re really big and maybe people don’t want so much of them in one bite). Once you take the cheese ball out of the refrigerator (about 30 minutes before you want to serve it), spoon on the mango chutney. All the toppings kind of adhere to the sticky chutney, so be generous with it. The pecans and coconut go on first, then the green onions and cranberries last. Sit back and wait to hear raves from people about it. I thought I’d have plenty of leftovers when I served it last week to some friends. Well, they ate 3/4 of it, so when I served the remainder I packed on some more toppings. It was barely enough. I’ll be making this again and again. Our friends are going to get tired of it, I’ll be serving it so often. Does that tell you you need to MAKE THIS? Hope so.

Two years ago: Southern Peach Cobbler

I don’t know about you, but I have a pantry with any number of little jars of “odd things.” Mostly they’re condiments, or other miscellaneous items that don’t exactly fit in the shelving category of canned vegetables, or canned fruit, or canned meat. One of my shelves does hold mostly the fruit/dessert type of stuff: evaporated milk, condensed milk, canned fruit of several varieties, honey, and almond paste.

Then there’s the veggie shelf with mostly beans and corn. I use very few canned vegetables other than those. Oh, canned tomatoes. There are a LOT  of those, since I use them in soups, stews, etc. Even though tomatoes are a fruit, we certainly don’t eat them like they are, so they go on the veggie shelf.

There’s also a shelf for canned meat – mostly tuna and chicken. Some smoked albacore, some canned salmon too. I also have a shelf of jams, jellies, apple butter and those kinds of items. They probably ought to be over on the fruit/dessert shelf. But oh well, they’re not. And then I have two shelves, actually of things that don’t fit any of those categories. Things like canned red peppers. I don’t use those as a vegetable, so they don’t go on the veggie shelf. Canned eggplant caponata. Marinated artichoke hearts. Some kind of powdered onion dip I bought 10 years ago, and have never opened. A jar of small pickled green tomatoes. Sun dried tomato tapenade. Preserved Meyer lemon rosemary marinade. Cranberry sauce. Cocktail sauce. And a pear topping for soft cheese. See, all those kinds of things are mostly appetizers, so I guess in my weird brain, I lump them together. I buy them, and promptly forget they’re there. When I’m planning a company dinner, I rarely even LOOK there to see if I have something I can use. Big wrong.

But this time I was eyeballing these two cute little jars given to me by my friend Darlene. She and her husband went to Italy a couple of years ago and she bought these little darlings there. They’re caramelized onions and a fig compote. So how could I use them? Since I had some Belgian Endive in the refrigerator, I decided to create an appetizer with them.

Here’s all I did: I used a small spoon and laid down a small strip of the caramelized onion, then a small strip of the fig salsa, right next to the onion. Then I crumbled (or sliced) a tiny piece of goat cheese or blue cheese and put that on top. A little sprinkling of finely minced Italian parsley on top and I was done. Not like an appetizer with bread or crackers (well, I served those too) but this would certainly be healthier for us. I just used the Belgian Endive as the “boat” to contain the items. They made for very easy finger food as we and our guests sat out on our patio. So how were they? Very good. The savory (the onions) and the sweet (the figs) was complemented by the cheese (goat or blue).  I actually preferred the goat cheese, but both tasted good. The next time I made them I had some fresh figs, so I didn’t use the fig jam, but a quarter of a fig. I think those were even better. But then, fig season is short. Now.

A year ago: Lamb Shepherd’s Pie
Two years ago: Normandy Apricot Custard (a veddy-veddy French dessert using fresh apricots)

In the summertime I enjoy serving a cold soup to guests – in a short glass as pictured above – when we’re enjoying conversation and wine on our patio. Not everyone likes cold soups, I’ve found. So you have to know your audience, your eating companions.

I hunted around for an appropriate recipe. I’ve made several cold soups over the years. My regular gazpacho is a favorite, but it is quite a lot of work. More than I felt like doing. Besides, we were having a lebanese layered salad with dinner that contained many of the same veggies. One of my favorites is a strawberry gazpacho – perfect when strawberries are at their peak (they’re past that now). But my DH doesn’t luv that soup as much as I do, and since this was a party in his honor, I had to scratch that one off the list. I also have a citrus gazpacho that I concocted many years ago, trying to copy a soup I’d had at Cafe Pasqual’s in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Now I have Katherine Kagel’s cookbook and it contains the real recipe – different than mine. But that wasn’t what I wanted either. Then I also have a white gazpacho – actually it’s an almond and cucumber combo – delicious – but I realized that was the soup I made for this same group of friends two years ago. We also needed a soup that would stand up to a Cabernet, which was what we’d be drinking. What to fix?

I finally decided to try this chilled avocado soup. In retrospect, perhaps it really wasn’t the right pairing with Cabernet – the avocado has too delicate a taste – or I should say the Cab overpowered the soup. But the soup itself was really good. Thick. Tasty. Not really like thick guacamole – it’s much thinner than that. I added some garlic powder to it – to give it a little kick. The other nice thing about this soup is that it must be made ahead, so it can chill. At least 24 hours. It will still good 48 hours later, and we had the last of it in tiny shot glasses 72 hours later. It was still bright green and tasty. Would I make it again? Yes, with the right meal. So keep that in mind if you decide to try this. Maybe serve it with white wine – I think it would pair better that way.

A year ago: BBQ Macaroni Salad (so easy, so good)
Two years ago: Halibut Osso Buco (a lot of work, but worth doing)

Last week I was reading Cheryl Sternman Rule’s blog, called 5secondrule, and having just written up a post a few days before about plums (everything you might possibly want to know about them) this cold soup recipe jumped out at me and said fix me. It took me a week to find good plums (at Costco) and another day or two to get around to making it.

The recipe (in its original form) is credited to Bruce Weinstein and  Mark Scarbrough, in their cookbook Cooking Know-How. And in their recipe it’s suggested as a first course. To me, it’s too sweet to be a first course, so I went at it thinking of it as a dessert. And is it yummy. Having just made the cherry compote with a bunch of spices in it, I decided to add a few more to this recipe. So, the allspice berries and coriander seeds are my additions. Otherwise the recipe is exactly as written.

It’s EASY to make. You simmer the plums in water and the spices, remove the spices and discard, remove the fruit, boil down the liquid, add it to the plums, then add in the sugar, yogurt and red wine. Puree – either in a blender, food processor, or with a stick blender. Chill. If you serve it as a first course, you might thin it out a little bit with a bit of milk (or cream or half-and-half). As a dessert I liked it a bit thicker. I also added the fillip of crème fraîche and the sprigs of mint. I had to sample it as soon as I made it, and also dished out a little glass for my DH. He proclaimed “wow, this is wonderful.” Just make sure you get out all the spices – so count them, okay? It’s not fun biting into an allspice berry. But make this, you should. Enough said.

A year ago: Strawberry Coffeecake

For our dinner party the other night, my friend Cherrie brought this appetizer. I’d planned to make a stuffed Brie, but whole rounds of Brie the right size seemed to be elusive, so Cherrie offered to bring this red bell pepper and walnut dip she’d already made, right out of this month’s issue of Gourmet. The dip is very easy – you buy bottled red bell peppers, and combine them in a food processor with fresh bread crumbs, toasted walnuts, red wine vinegar, cumin, cayenne and olive oil. That’s it. You’re done. Cherrie served this with another recipe from the same issue – for garlic-oregano grilled pita bread. She adapted it just a little – she used lemon olive oil spread on the hot, grilled pita bread, then sprinkled that with dried oregano and a bit of Himalayan salt.

She left the remainder of the spread with us, and the remaining pita bread, so the next night I made her quick-method for the pita – I just heated them in the microwave, brushed them with a bit of blood orange olive oil, then sprinkled them with dried thyme. Any of those Mediterranean herbs would do fine, I think. This is a VERY tasty spread – EASY – and I’d make this myself next time I need this type of a dip. Everyone asked about it (most thought it was a type of hummus) and wanted the recipe.

A year ago: Jayne’s Gastropub (a San Diego restaurant)
Two years ago: Chicken Bamako

This is the first of two onion recipes I’m going to share. Tomorrow you’ll learn more about how/why I have these wonderful sweet onions in the first place, but will post this one first. You’d likely think the above bruschetta was topped with an olive tapenade. Nope. Or maybe a fig jam? Nope. Could even be dark mushrooms? No on all counts. It’s onions.

We went out to dinner last night with good friends, and our custom with Bob & Liz is to gather at one or the other of our homes for some pre-prandial appetizers and wine, then off we go to a restaurant. We’ve been trying to go to NEW restaurants every time we go out, so it keeps us on our toes to find new ones to try. We’ve been very successful so far, even in this economy!

I’d made this appetizer a few days ago with the first of my big onion bonanza and we polished it off last night with our wine and food before dinner. Liz wants the recipe. I’ll be making these again soon.

So here’s the story about them. The recipe is based on one from a new cookbook called The New American Olive Oil, by Fran Gage. I followed her recipe mostly, but then I took a right turn and made it different. After trying it once according to the recipe, I made it my own with the garnish. First you slice about 2 pounds of onions (I used sweet onions) and sauté them with about 4 T. of extra-virgin olive oil and a tiny smattering of salt. It cooks. And cooks. And cooks. At a very low heat for about an hour. You stir occasionally, and more often near the end so the onions don’t stick. During the hour of cooking they lose all their water and they cook down and down and down. The recipe suggests cooking them until they are the color of a polished mahogany table. Am sure you can get the picture. When mine were looking like the skin of an Idaho potato I knew I still had room to go. But stirring is required from then on. Still on fairly low heat. And finally, it DID get to be the color of mahogany.

The huge – HUGE – pan of onions had dwindled to about a half a CUP of dark brown goop. After cooling, you add in some GOOD balsamic vinegar (I happened to use pomegranate balsamic vinegar because it sits out on my countertop). Then you taste it for seasoning. Toasted bread is in order (baguette slices, spread lightly with olive oil and baked at 400 for about 4-5 minutes), then you gently spread some of this heaven-on-a-bun on top of the toast pieces. Here’s where I took the right turn. I thought it needed a taste-foil, so I added some boursin cheese crumbles (my recipe below indicates some crumbled goat cheese, either one) and a smattering of finely minced parsley. Then a jot of freshly ground black pepper and it’s ready to serve.

I like this served slightly warm, but it’s up to you. Certainly no colder than room temp, so if you make this ahead, let it sit out a bit, or heat briefly in the microwave before spreading. Just be prepared for a very small SMALL quantity. Two pounds of onions made about 1/2 cup of finished onions. Just so you know . . .

A year ago: Sauce for Meat Leftovers

You’ll have to take a gander at these little baby globe-shaped eggplant (below) – they’re called Hindu, or Indian, or Indian Paint. They’re full grown, not really babies. Cute little buggers. Offered at the local farmer’s market last week, and I wanted to do something easy but fun with them.

I cut them in half (although you don’t have to) and baked them (drizzled with olive oil) at 375 for about 45 minutes, until the skins had begun to shrivel. But not enough that they’d dried out. I had ample ripe on-the-stem tomatoes, some red onion, green onion, fresh mint and parsley. Then I made a dressing with olive oil, lemon juice, sherry vinegar, salt, pepper and garlic. The recipe came from Chow.com. I’d never looked at the website before, but the recipe is credited to a restaurant called Nopa (in San Francisco). Chef Laurence Jossel. This could also be an appetizer, I think – the original recipe sounds more like one since you scoop it onto pita bread. So think of that as an option. I made it as a side dish with grilled lamb chops.

The salad, to be served at room temp, was easy. Just a bit of chopping and mincing involved. Be sure to include the wine vinegar – lemon juice isn’t enough to give this salad it’s bright flavor. The original recipe said just wine vinegar – I used sherry because I have some good stuff and like to use it in a salad such as this one when the flavor shines through. These small eggplant don’t need to be skinned – their skin is quite thin and quite edible.

A year ago: Asparagus (everything you ever wanted to know about)
Two years ago:  Bacon & Tomato Dunk (oh yes, one of my fav’s)

I don’t know about you, but I don’t buy very much shrimp anymore. According to the shrimp police, or the fish police, or the FDA?, eating almost any kind of shrimp is questionable because of the raising conditions, what they’re fed and what kind of unhealthy minerals we then ingest. I read recently that U.S. grown shrimp are safe, though. But, it’s hard to find U.S. raised shrimp these days. I’ve been looking, but haven’t found any in several months of inspecting labels in minute fine print at my local stores. Of course, I don’t (won’t) buy shrimp from the regular grocery stores anyway. Those shrimp don’t even look appealing, sorry to say. Usually I trust Trader Joe’s, but these shrimp pictured above came from Thailand, I think. Probably not a good source, either. So right now my freezer is empty of shrimp, and may be so for awhile. Makes me sad, because I really like shrimp. Sigh.

Well anyway, I decided to whip up something with this last bag. I went to my to-try recipes and found something called Southern BBQ shrimp. Well, these aren’t like any kind of “barbecue” I know. They don’t even make a fly-by over an outdoor grill. They’re broiled. (And no, you wouldn’t want to grill them because they’d burn with the amount of brown sugar in the marinade.)  So how come the name? Well, it’s a southern (American) tradition – making a “barbecue” kind of sauce with Worcestershire sauce, butter and brown sugar. This recipe also had lemon juice, and some seasoning too. Whatever it’s called, it was easy to make. And QUICK. The recipe came from Bon Appetit, in July, 2006. With a nice multi-vegetable green salad, this was dinner. The article recommended some baguette slices on the side too. I used shrimp with only the tail shells attached, but the recipe calls for raw, full-shell types. Some of these versions of Southern BBQ shrimp came from shrimp boat chefs, when they were out at sea. Maybe somebody who reads my blog and is from the South will weigh-in on the origin of this kind of barbecue . . .

A year ago: Greek Pita Sandwich
Two years ago: Roasted Poblano Asiago Soup (oh, a real favorite)