There’s the finished product, a green salad with this unusual sauce on it, standing in as a salad dressing.

This post has a back story – but before you dismiss this recipe without knowing, this ubiquitous Italian sauce traditionally is lapped over thin slices of a veal roast, and contains canned (jarred) tuna. Don’t ewww over it. It’s quite amazing.

Suffer along with me as I jump back in time to the late 1980s, I think. My DH (dear husband Dave) and I were on a wonderful vacation in Europe. He’d gotten acquainted with Simone, his sales counterpart in Paris. She had stayed with us when she was here in California, and on more than one occasion she issued us an invitation for us to stay with her if we wanted to visit Paris for a few days. Well, sure we would!

A year or so later, after taking a lovely, long weekend driving trip visiting wineries and castles SW of Paris with her as our tour guide, we returned to her apartment (which had a lovely view of the Eiffel Tower, by the way) and I offered to prepare a meal the following evening. She begged me to make vitello tonnato, and she wanted to invite some American friends of hers who were living for a year in Paris. I hadn’t a clue what the dish was, but she had a recipe.

It’s available at amazon.

She went off to work and Dave and I went out to buy all the ingredients. One of her caveats was to be sure to use the leaves of her basil plant, a pitiful dried-up thing she had in a window in her rather bleak kitchen. Bear with me, here, but back in the late 80s I don’t think we Americans knew much about live basil. It wasn’t available except in dried form. Vitello Tonnato, as I mentioned above, is a very classic Italian dish of a veal roast, roasted ahead, cooled, then sliced thinly, plated decoratively on a platter, then this tuna sauce is poured over it. In her recipe, she wanted the sauce poured over whole room temp roast, and then garnished with basil. It all went well – except I forgot the basil. Let’s just say, she was upset. Such an important aspect of the recipe, she felt, and I’d forgotten to garnish the dish correctly. Lesson learned.

I vaguely remembered this sauce, but because we abhor eating veal here in the U.S., it never occurred to me it would be just as tasty served on a turkey breast, or even pork tenderloin, perhaps. Or to be used as a dip for raw veggies. A week or so ago I was reading a blog post from a foodie someone who has a pretty good following, and was quite unhappy when she said in order to see the recipe, I’d need to upgrade my subscription to paid. Nope, not doing that. So I researched, and found several recipes, and utilized the few clues that blogger had mentioned.

So there is the sauce, whizzled up in a food processor. Obviously, it’s messy. It takes awhile to puree this as the tuna is a meat. You do want it to be a sauce that is smooth.

Since I eat salad a LOT, it was the sauce used as a salad dressing that intrigued me. As I write this, I’ve just about finished the jar (above), having mixed it with a variety of salad greens and raw veggies.

Some of the recipes do use canned (not imported Italian) tuna, but I had one of those jars on my pantry shelf (picture above). Perhaps you don’t have to use the Italian, but for sure use oil-packed. Tuna here that’s dry packed, is so very dry.

Interestingly enough, none of the recipes I perused contained basil. Simone had insisted it was an important aspect. After that trip, we lost touch with Simone as she retired and moved to her home in Belgium. I’m glad I remembered about tonnato, however!

What’s GOOD: I just love this sauce. For me, it became the protein and dressing for my salad. It is reminiscent of a Caesar dressing. It has tons of flavor – and unless you know it’s tuna, you might not be able to figure it out.

What’s NOT: only if you don’t have some of that good jarred tuna (it’s available on amazon, BTW). I’ll be making this again, for sure.

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Get everything ready, at hand, before starting. Once you’re all prepared it takes just minutes to cook and serve. Delicious sauce.

Recently my friend Linda T and I spent the weekend in the desert, and we cooked up a storm. Like we always do. I’ve already posted the roasted salmon with butter that was off-the-charts delicious, that we ate two nights in a row. The third night there Linda brought out these lettuce wraps. Well, she brought out all the various things, ground chicken and flavorings and seasonings to make them. She’d done all the hard work at home – numerous little Tupperware containers with various things in them. She assembled them near the cooktop because once you begin this dish you need to hover, watch, stir, add, stir, watch, adjust the heat, and in a matter of a few minutes it’s ready to eat.

The recipe comes from Linda’s daughter, Kristin, who is a great cook in her own right. (Hi Kris!)

First the red onion was chopped. It went into the pan with a tablespoon of olive oil and was cooked a bit. Then another tablespoon of oil was added to the pan and the ground chicken went in. Linda bought the mix of white and dark meat (more flavorful, I agree!), a pound. Once the chicken is mostly cooked most of the other ingredients go in – garlic, water chestnuts (after she’d added the water chestnuts, Linda realized she’d forgotten to chop them up) red pepper flakes, Gochujang paste (that’s the Korean spicy paste), soy sauce, honey, and Mirin (Japanese sweet white wine). That was stirred and cooked a bit as the sauce thickens. Then Linda added the chopped green onions and the essential (because of the intense delicious flavor it adds) dark sesame oil.

Meanwhile, we’d set the table, gotten out a big plate and I’d prepped some lettuce leaves (head lettuce, inner leaves that are more cupped in shape) for us. Linda quickly spooned the hot chicken into the lettuce cups and we sat down immediately. Linda’s recipe says it serves 3, but I think it could serve 4 if you’re not huge eaters, meaning about 4 ounces of chicken per person.

Linda sent the leftovers home with me, and I ate it for two dinners along with some steamed broccoli. Very filling and just delicious. The Gochujang sauce adds such a nice umami flavor to this – most grocery stores carry it these days, so do seek it out. It keeps forever in your refrigerator. If you’re watching salt, do use low-sodium soy sauce – most grocery stores carry that too, these days.

What’s GOOD: this mixture – chicken, chili, seasonings, is just SO tasty. Healthy for sure, only 2 T oil for the whole dish. It is messy, I’ll give you that, but worth every dribble and drip [napkins, please!]. Very worth making. The green onions add a nice pop of color.

What’s NOT: only that there IS some prep needed – chopping, mincing and a bunch of little measuring of things. That will take 5-10 minutes, I suppose. The liquid things could be combined into a measuring cup and set aside for later to make it easier.

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Think hummus (the texture) but instead of garbanzo beans, think of butternut squash (soft texture, almost sweet) with all the same flavors.

Recently I was able to borrow a library e-book of Damaris Phillips’ cookbook, called Southern Girl Meets Vegetarian Boy. It’s an interesting read (published in 2017), about her marriage and her valiant effort to find things that she enjoys (she eats meat) that he will eat (he’s vegetarian). And she’s been quite successful at it. I copied a bunch of recipes out of the book, this being one of them. Damaris has become good friends with Bobby Flay and they were on a show together, though I never saw it. She lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

I’m not eating beans mostly (forsaking carbs), but I think an occasional winter squash is perhaps better for me. Anyway, I spotted a package of Trader Joe’s already cubed butternut last week, and ding-ding, I remembered this recipe. I needed a new jar of tahini, and I had za’atar on hand already.

Into the food processor goes the caramelized squash (cooled), some salt, EVOO and tahini. Easy. I boxed it up in the frig to let it mellow a bit, and have served it several times over the last week. Yesterday I ate the remaining serving straight. When I served it to guests, I put out some lavash bread alongside, that I’d cut into triangles.

What’s GOOD: Oh my goodness, this is wonderful. Love the texture, much like bean-hummus, but maybe better. Squash gives it a sweeter taste, but there’s no sugar in it. Loved it on the lavash triangles. It keeps for about a week, or freeze if you have some leftover.

What’s NOT: not a single thing. This is a keeper of a recipe.

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What’s that, you ask? A pizza made with ready-made pizza dough, topped with various cheeses, a dash of truffle oil, then arugula and prosciutto on top.

A post from Taylor: Hi there! My name is Taylor and I am Carolyn’s second oldest grandchild, 27, (and most favorite, okay maybe don’t put that in the post). You may remember a few short years ago I was living with grandma while going to nursing school. Now, I have been a labor and delivery nurse for about two years and it is the absolute best career in the whole world! I recently purchased my first home (see the key in my hand?) in Northern California and my dad helped me with some pretty extensive updates to the house.

I love my new house so very much and I am so excited to have my own place to make home and have people over. Now, I will admit, I am not a lover of being in the kitchen but when it comes to bringing people together and being around people I love, I can usually force myself to follow a recipe. Recently I was invited to be a part of a group that some of the women at my church put together called “cookbook club.” It is a group of about 10 wonderful women from my church. We picked a cookbook, the first one being the Comfortable Kitchen by Alex Snodgrass. We all picked a different item from the book.

A few of us picked appetizers, a couple entrees, a few sides, dessert and a drink! We also all went along with the theme of “comfortable kitchen” and wore our Pj’s! I decided to make the Truffle Pizza. It was a big hit!

The photo at top was the only picture I got of it before it all got eaten up! I ended up making 2, one with a gluten free crust and one with a regular pizza crust. It was so easy to make and tasted so delicious! So cheesy and gooey!

Here are all of my friends. I’m on the far right, back row.

The best thing about the pizza is it tells you to use premade dough. Obviously, if you have a great recipe for your own homemade pizza dough you could do that as well. The recipe calls for 1 tablespoon of truffle oil and it seemed to be the perfect amount. It would be easy to add more or less of each ingredient depending on how you like it! When grandma came to visit a few weeks ago, I pulled out her cookbook and told her about cookbook club. I am so excited and honored to get to host the next cookbook club in my new home and I thought, how fun to use grandma’s recipes! I have grown up reading, getting featured on and sharing the blog with everyone I know. It is very special to me, even though I’m not a cooking extraordinaire like grandma. Everyone in the group thought that was so fun and I can’t wait to share what we come up with. I just adore my sweet grandma and am so excited to honor her in such a special way! My friends are thinking Grandma is a celebrity now and they want her to make a guest appearance.

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Nostalgia here. I used to make these over and over again, back in the 60s and 70s. Do you remember them too?

A few weeks ago two friends of mine and I hosted a luncheon for a group of 10 of us ladies, a fundraiser that the guests all paid money to attend. We decided to do a dip into the past, the 50s and 60s. You’re going to see a few recipes from this event in coming weeks. This appetizer, a salad, and an entree too. Lois made some meatballs (I forgot to take a picture or I’d post that recipe too) cooked in chili sauce and grape jelly (remember those variations?). Linda made the lime Jell-O salad which I just loved, almost identical to the one I used to make. We also made my mother’s crisp apple pudding with whipped cream, which harkens back to the 1930s I would guess, but I grew up with having it in the 50s.

These little cocktail appetizers are not hard to make, though you do have to mix up the dough, flatten a teaspoon or so of it to enclose a pimiento-stuffed olive, chill them in the frig for an hour or so, then bake them. When I made them years ago I’d double the recipe and once baked I’d freeze them on a cookie sheet, then pile them into a freezer container, all ready for some dinner party when I’d pull them out and re-bake them.

The recipe I had differed a little from Lois’s recipe here, but they tasted much the same, so I’m using hers except for the addition of paprika to the dough. At the time (the 60s), these were quite the “thing,” and because some people didn’t like fussing with a dough, they were very special. Truly, they’re not difficult to make, and you’ll hear raves from your guests. They can be served hot or at room temp.

What’s GOOD: the contrast of the cheese dough and the astringency of the stuffed olive are a good balance. Cheesy, briny all in one. These are a winner and here we are 60+ years later, making them again, and they’re still just as good as in the 1960s. Great to freeze and have on hand.

What’s NOT: only that you do have to “fuss” a bit with the dough, flattening it out to encircle the olive. You don’t want olive juice in there either or the dough won’t seal well.

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Really tasty stuff. It’s like that ubiquitous onion dip from a box, but made yourself and it tastes like it’s on onion steroids.

Having been invited to an 80th birthday party for Peter, my friend Kathy’s husband, I asked what could I bring? Kathy said, oh, you always make such good appetizers. Okay, will do. This dip stood out from my untried recipes. It came from Sunset magazine –  they call it just “spring onion dip,” but I’ve added the word shallot because those little bulbs are a significant part of the ingredients. Their recipe has you buy fried shallots. Having never seen them (or maybe I’ve just not noticed) I made my own, although they’re really just caramelized, not fried crispy exactly.

The recipe also calls for Kewpie mayo. I wrote up a post last year about that, for Japanese egg salad sandwiches. I’m now noticing Kewpie in my regular grocery stores. If you don’t have it, I truly don’t think it would matter if you used regular mayo (just don’t use Miracle Whip as it’s sweetened). Kewpie uses only egg yolks (not whole eggs) and it uses rice vinegar, so it has a bit of a different tanginess.

Depending on the size of the shallots you buy, you want just 1/2 cup of finished “fried” shallots, so for me that was about 5 of them. They need to be cooked, then cooled before they’re added to the dip mixture. For the dip you combine mayo, sour cream and a bunch of flavorings, then the shallots are added. When I made it, it was way too salty (for me, anyway) so I’ve reduced the amount of salt in the recipe below. Taste it to make sure – add more to suit your palate. The recipe calls for buttermilk to thin the dip if needed. I didn’t think it was needed.

Note that there is a substantial amount of green onions needed, and chives, so make sure you buy enough.

If you’re a potato chip aficionado, then you’ll appreciate that the recipe indicated to serve with Ruffles brand chips. That’s what you see in the photo above.

The dip was really delicious. VERY onion-y, or shallot-y, whatever  you want to call it. I made a double recipe and left the rest of it with my friend Kathy, along with the beloved Ruffles chips, which she said was their favorite brand anyway. As mentioned, the original recipe had more salt, so I thought it was overly salted, yet everyone ate it and no one else noticed. I do recall that the box-mixed onion dip was also very salty, so perhaps the recipe developer was trying to mimic that brand.

What’s GOOD; really tasty onion flavor. The shallots add a good umami taste, but it’s not distinguishable from the other onion flavors. I’d make it again, for sure. So much better than the box mix type.

What’s NOT: nothing, really, unless you hate to peel, chop and sauté shallots since there are a few in the recipe. Otherwise it’s just a matter of a bunch of chopping, mincing and stirring.

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You are going to love these. I mean it.

In my last post I told you about Vivian Howard’s latest cookbook, This Will Make It Taste Good, and about the various “flavor heroes,” she calls them, that she relies upon in her restaurant and home cooking. To make this recipe above, however, you have to make one of her flavor heroes, the one she calls the “Little Green Dress.” Hereon referred to as LGD! I suppose that’s a take on every woman’s need for a “little black dress,” except that here, the color is decidedly green, not black.

The flavor hero recipe has a preponderance of Castelvetrano olives in it, plus shallots, garlic, vinegar, capers, some anchovies (which you don’t taste at all – but you know – anchovies are one of the umami flavors), fresh parsley, fresh mint, EVOO, hot sauce and salt. You pour this into a clean glass jar, and if you haven’t used it within a few days, pour a little layer of EVOO on top so it doesn’t spoil. It will keep for several weeks that way.

If you’re not familiar with Castelvetrano olives . . . well, they’re a more ripe olive than the traditional green olives – not in color, just in how they pickle them, I guess. They have a milder flavor and they’re not as piquant (sour).

Once you make this flavor hero, then you add some of it to – – in this case it’s canned tuna, a little bit of mayo, and some minced celery and you’ve got a fantastic lunch. Vivian slices avocado and puts that on the cracker first, then piles it with the tuna salad. I forgot the avocado that day, but I made it again the following day, and used some avocado on one, and a sliced egg on the other.

You may THINK this is not worth the trouble, but I’m tellin’ you, it is. I don’t think I’ve ever had canned tuna taste this great. I’m serious. When my friend Cherrie and I got together to make three of the flavor heroes, we made this tuna salad cracker for our lunch. Cherrie and I were both blown away by how flavorful it is. FYI: I buy the line-caught Wild Planet albacore tuna from Costco (blue can, in a stack of about 5).

But, I do need to tell you about Wasa crispbread crackers. I remember them vaguely from my youth – my mother used to buy them. I have no recollection what we ate them with. They come in various grain flavors – I bought the whole grain. They’re not a good cracker to eat by themselves – even Vivian Howard says they taste kind of like cardboard. But they have a very unique characteristic (not mentioned in the book) that once you pick up that little slate of cracker, piled with goodies, you can bite into it without risking cracking the whole cracker and making a big mess. It stays intact as you munch on down. I suppose you could make the tuna salad and use other crackers, but I’m certainly a fan now, of Wasa crackers. I don’t know whether all grocery stores have them – I finally found them at my small, independent market near me.

It’s been two days since I had this for my lunch, and as I write, I’m craving another serving of those tuna crackers.

What’s GOOD: (the flavor hero, the LGD): so unique, and I hope to find more ways to use it. The cookbook includes many recipes using small amounts of it. (The tuna cracker): it’s sensational. I’m craving it. So delicious. Once you have the LGD made, it’s so very easy to make the tuna salad and you’ve got a simple but flavor-packed lunch.

What’s NOT: well, if you’re not willing to put in the effort to make the LGD, then you won’t be able to enjoy the flavor of the tuna snack crackers. I’m telling you, you don’t want to miss this flavor puch. FOMO!

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Having made this as a dip, to eat with pita chips, I had a lot of it – and it went beautifully as a sauce with the tri-tip steak we grilled. Several guests commented how complementary it was to the meat.

A post from Carolyn. There’s been a bit of cooking and entertaining going on in my house lately. Birthdays and then Taylor’s nursing graduation. I made a batch of this dip and had plenty to serve for both events. Happy coincidence. I made the grilled tri-tip for both parties (mostly different people) and this dip, although maybe not the most appetizing color, is really delicious.

The recipe has been in my arsenal for a long time – I might have made it years ago – before I started writing a blog. It’s a Phillis Carey recipe. And I’ll just say – it’s super easy to make. It’s a sour cream based dip but also contains red wine vinegar, some oil, a little brown sugar, garlic, fresh ginger, cumin and salt. The most time consuming thing about this is soaking the dried ancho chiles in boiling water for about 20-30 minutes.

There’s a picture at left of some ancho chiles (or chilies). They’re a very dark red/brown. They’re a pasilla/poblano chile that’s been dried. They have tons of flavor, but not much heat. I keep them on hand – although the food experts say if you haven’t used them in a year, buy new ones. I’ve never done that — I have dried chiles that are 5 years old and they seem fine to me. Use  your own judgment.

Anyway, once you have soaked the chiles, you mix up the ingredients in the food processor, then chill for several hours to allow the flavors to blend. Serve with tortilla chips, with veggie strips, crackers, or as a sauce for grilled meat (shrimp also recommended).

What’s GOOD: so easy to make. Just have dried chiles and sour cream on hand and you will likely have all the other ingredients. Great also as a sauce to grilled meat. It’s not hot – it has a little bit of heat and a lot of flavor.

What’s NOT: nothing, as long as you have the dried chiles on hand.

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Do you wonder how to pronounce it? It’s ch-tee-pee-tee. It’s Turkish.

A post from Carolyn. It’s been years ago now that one of my granddaughters, Sabrina (the one who has just started med school in South Carolina) and I flew to Washington, D.C. with my son, Powell (her uncle), who needed to be there on business. In between business he took us places and made some touring arrangements for us. Sabrina and I flitted around to various monuments and museums during the daytime and then we’d meet Powell in the evenings. One night he took us to Zaytinya, a well known restaurant (by Jose Andres) which serves Turkish, Greek and Lebanese food. So kinda-sorta Eastern Mediterranean food. Among the outstanding dishes we had that night, this one stood out to me. An appetizer served with pita bread or pita chips. I couldn’t get enough of it. Once I got home, I found the recipe online somewhere, somehow, and until now I hadn’t gotten around to making it. Not sure why as it’s so easy to do.

If you have abundant red bell peppers, by all means, char or roast them yourself. I had a big jar of them in my pantry, so used them instead. You mix up a vinaigrette of shallot, garlic, red wine vinegar and EVOO or just OO, then mix in crumbled Feta, some fresh thyme leaves and you’re done. So easy. I made it the day before, and actually, it kept for a week. Some of the feta had begun to disintegrate, but the flavor was still there and it tasted fine. The picture I found online shows a more homogenous mixture (you couldn’t see the cheese or peppers, it was just a solid red), but I like the differentiation with mixing it this way.

What’s GOOD: how easy it is to make if you’ve got some jarred bell peppers. Keeps for several days; obviously a good make-ahead appetizer. Very tasty with the bell pepper and cheese combo. Altogether delicious. I served it with pita chips.

What’s NOT: nothing that I can think of.

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These toasts, cute as can be, and quite delicious. I’d have this for lunch. Dinner even, if you didn’t want a hearty meal.

A post from Carolyn. So this recipe came from my friend Cherrie. She subscribes frequently to “Hello, Fresh,” that delivery service that gives you everything you need for a meal (several meals in a week, actually), all you have to do it put it together. I’m not sure whether this was an appetizer, or if it was a vegetarian type light dinner. She made it, took a taste of her husband’s but decided she wasn’t hungry enough for it and when I came for dinner that night she gave me a package of these. Already put together – all I had to do was warm them up a bit. She liked it enough she plans on making it herself sometime soon, and she sent me the Hello, Fresh print-out they sent her for the preparation.

Going online, I discovered this recipe was in Bon Appetit in 2014. So neither she nor I can claim anything about creating this recipe. It’s just that with tomatoes in season right now (and so very tasty) this can make a lovely light meal, or served on smaller toasts, as appetizers. However you serve them, they’re really tasty and not difficult to make.

There’s the photo I took of the ones my friend Cherrie made. She used pine nuts in hers, not walnuts. You do need to have ricotta on hand, some good tomatoes (cherry or grape type), some fresh herbs (chives, dill, thyme, maybe, or basil) and good bread to serve it on. Oh yes, balsamic glaze too. Knowing this recipe was just up my friend Joan’s alley, I sent it to her and she made it that very evening (her picture there at top). She raved about the good taste of the tomatoes (charred) and the garlic too. I concur – love tomatoes and garlic, and the charred tomatoes have that wonderful umami flavor.

What’s GOOD: the tomatoes (charred makes such a difference), the garlic, the cheese, texture of the nuts, the herby ricotta. Everything good.

What’s NOT: nary a thing – fresh herbs are needed here.

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