Well. There are tea sandwiches, and then there are THESE tea sandwiches. Oh gosh were they delicious. As I’m writing this – and it’s breakfast time this moment – I’d eat these for breakfast if I had any of them!

Our daughter Sara decided to throw a tea for a group of her girlfriends. Her rule: no children allowed – it was going to be a time for her friends, all busy moms – to sit and relax. Since we were driving there to visit them that evening, she asked if I’d come early. Of course! I’m always up for tea! At home, I made two kinds of cookies to help her – the Baked Cinnamon Toasts I’ve already raved about here and the Moravian Sugar Cookies, although my recipe calls them Almond Spice Wafers. I also made lemon curd, and couldn’t believe it when we got all done and realized we’d forgotten to put it out! Oh, so sad. Sara made the middle cookies you can see below, rich chocolate shortbread kind of cookies pillowed with a chewy caramel layer. Sara made 2 kinds of tea – a rooibos, which is her day to day favorite decaf tea, and a pot of Earl Grey. She also put out some gorgeous spring strawberries, sugar, milk, teacups and saucers, some crème fraiche that I sweetened with a little bit of sugar (this was in lieu of clotted cream), and napkins, of course.

The COOKIES: Baked Cinnamon Toasts are on the left, Sara’s chocolate caramel filled cookies in the middle and the Almond Spice Wafers on the right. Sara thought the Cinnamon  Toasts were the hit of the cookie category. I agree. I had about 5-6 of them I kept at home and within a day they were gone – even my DH, who rarely eats anything sweet – gobbled down 2-3 of them. Guess I’ll have to make them again.

I’ll write up a post in the next day or so with the two scones we made. One an apricot-orange and the star of the show, a lavender white chocolate chip.

The winner of the tea sandwich category at Sara’s tea was this cucumber one. I mean, what would a ladies’ tea be without some cucumber sandwiches? Sara found some tea sandwich suggestions at this website. For this sandwich it said:  Cucumber-Butter – Mix 4 tablespoons softened butter, 1/2 teaspoon grated lemon zest and 1 tablespoon chopped fresh herbs. Spread on white bread and sandwich with sliced cucumber. Trim the crusts and cut into pieces.   We were making 5 whole sandwiches (which made 4 little quarters each), so we had 20 of each sandwich we made. I added minced chives, lemon zest, some salt and a teaspoon or so of fresh minced thyme leaves. I used 1 cube of butter for the 5 sandwiches and it was just enough.

Over the years, I’ve learned that you need to get just the right proportion of filling to bread.

So in this case, with our first taste test, there wasn’t enough butter. The butter needed salt too. And the cucumber wasn’t quite thick enough. Obviously start with very soft butter, add the flavorings and taste. Cut off the crusts on the bread. We chose not to make round cutouts (too much trouble), so I generously buttered both sides of the bread and placed 4 cucumber rounds on each sandwich. We chose to cut just one slice rather than use many ultra-thin slices as I knew the multiple slices would slip and the sandwich would come apart from the moisture in the cucumbers. So one slice – in our case the cucumber was about 1/8 inch+ thick. The bread used was some very, very soft white sandwich bread we bought here in our local village at a Japanese bakery called Cream Pan. They make the softest and fluffiest white sandwich bread. Kind of like Weber’s bread, but a whole lot more tasty. With the cucumber in place the other bread slice was very carefully positioned, then I gently – oh so gently – cut the sandwich into 4 squares, trying not to cut into any of the cucumbers.

The sandwiches went onto a nice serving tray and Sara covered the platter with a dampened tea towel, which kept them very fresh for the hour prior to the start of the tea. We didn’t refrigerate them – but there wasn’t anything like mayo in anything, so that worked just fine.

The other tea sandwich was just okay. I probably wouldn’t make them again, but it was certainly different. Sara really wanted sandwiches containing some prosciutto, so the website suggestion said: Pea-Prosciutto: puree 1/2 cup thawed frozen peas with 1 tablespoon each olive oil and water in a blender; season with salt and pepper. Spread inside a split loaf of focaccia and fill with prosciutto and shaved parmesan. Cut into squares. 

My suggestion had been to use ham instead of prosciutto, but Sara really wanted the prosciutto, so I bought some imported less-salty prosciutto from our local Italian deli. Sara made the pea puree, which was cinchy easy. I spread the bread with the pea puree, then we took small strips of the prosciutto and layered about 3 ultra-thin slices on each sandwich, added some shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano (very thin). My other suggestion to Sara had been that we chop up the prosciutto instead of laying it in strips (ribbons, really) in the sandwich, but Sara wanted to SEE the prosciutto. Cutting this sandwich was more of a challenge because of the grain of the meat, cut the long way it was easy, but across the prosciutto grain was difficult. For sure use a serrated knife, like a bread knife and use a gentle repetitive sawing motion. Even she agreed later that it would have been easier to eat if we’d chopped it up. Prosciutto has a tendency to be kind of stringy – very do-able if you’re eating a slice out of hand, but not so easy when it pulls apart a dainty tea sandwich! But overall, we were unimpressed with this sandwich. It needed something moist in it – like a thin-thin slice of tomato maybe, or lettuce? And I think I would have added some mayo to the pea puree. I don’t think anybody went back for seconds on this sandwich, but that’s mostly because the cucumber one was SO delicious.

What’s GOOD: well, the herb butter just “made” the sandwich, I think. And the combo of the so very soft thin white bread [it was so perfect for this . . . too bad white bread isn’t all that healthy!] with the crispy cucumber slice, and the lemon zest. It was all just fantastic!
What’s NOT: nothing at all – just know you can’t make this very far in advance – an hour or so. Enlist someone’s help with it so if you’re the hostess you can be doing other things like stirring up scones and boiling water for the tea, setting the table, etc.

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If you’re not all that interested in knowing more about bell peppers, well, I understand. Come back in a couple of days and there will be a recipe up again on the blog. The “food scientist” in me wants more info sometimes, just better knowledge about the food products I buy, even if they’re something I’ve been purchasing for decades.

Prior to about 1980, there was only one kind of bell pepper available – GREEN. Which is why I didn’t like them much. My Dad loved stuffed green peppers (filled with a ground beef and rice mixture and served with tomato sauce). I thought these were vile – I could eat the filling, but the pepper part was bitter, acidic. That stuffed pepper style was very popular during the 1950-70 time frame.

Somewhere around 1960 shoppers were offered a choice of colors –  and bell pepper sales soared. I do remember when they first began appearing in grocery stores – the ones from Holland. But oh, were they ever expensive – way beyond my food budget. In the 30 years after that our per capita consumption of bell peppers quadrupled. According to the USDA, on any given day, about a quarter of Americans were eating some amount of a bell pepper, which is double the amount we’d eat of a French fry. Well, that’s a good thing! The same percentage increase occurred with chile peppers too, although it’s leveled off in the last 20 years. All the credit is due to the Dutch, who figured out how to outsmart nature. You probably already know this – all peppers start out green, and it’s only because they are left on the bush or vine that the colors develop.

Because peppers are a very tender product, they’re very susceptible to bugs and viruses (who knew? viruses? really?). Only very careful farming can produce a fully ripe and colored bell pepper without it developing blemishes and soft spots. Holland’s farmers raise all of theirs in greenhouses, which is why they’re so pristine (and expensive).

Our taste buds really only recognize two tastes in peppers – sweet or hot. Well, I’ll add a 3rd one – bitter, which is what is in green bells – to me, anyway. There are 22 wild varieties of peppers out there and 5 domesticated ones. Most peppers are grown in California and Florida. Chile peppers mostly come from Mexico, where there are at least 3 varieties that grace nearly every Mexican family’s table with regularity. I’m guessing those are: jalapeno, serrano, and poblano. We can find those at our grocery stores every day here in Southern California.

What makes a chile pepper hot is capsaisin (cap-SAY-eh-sun), and if you remember nothing else from this little write-up, the heat in peppers comes MOSTLY from the ribs. Not the seeds. That’s not to say that if you bite into a piece of the green of a jalapeno, you won’t taste heat – you will, but the real heat is in the little whitish/yellowish rib membrane inside the pepper. Remove those and you’ll have a much milder pepper experience. Unless, of course, you WANT the heat, in which case leave it in! Different peppers contain different concentrations of capsaicin (like habanero, the hottest, to the bell pepper which has the least) . And the heat is caused by a recessive gene. That was news to me! What’s interesting is that the heat in chiles can vary not only by variety, but also from peppers on the same bush. Little Japanese shishito peppers (at left) are the most variable – about one in every dozen will be hot enough to blow off the top of your head. Figuratively, of course.

CHOOSING PEPPERS: With the bell peppers, choose the heaviest ones, the ones that are the most filled out and the darkest in color. They’re the sweetest. The recommendation is to choose the peppers that have the boxiest shape with the flattest sides. And obviously, don’t buy one that has a blemish or a soft spot anywhere. Chile peppers should be average size and also unblemished and definitely firm. No soft ones at all.  The best prices on all peppers is in the mid-summer when they are available in abundance.

STORING PEPPERS: They’ll keep best if wrapped well and stored in the refrigerator at about 45°. That’s the temp of most refrigerators. No colder than that, though, or the peppers will start to break down.

Nearly all this information came from Russ Parsons’ book How to Pick a Peach: The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table.

Peppers for Cold Meat – my favorite recipe you’ll find here on my blog that showcases bell peppers – it’s a sweet and sour kind of relish that’s just a match made in heaven for almost any kind of meat. It’s easy to make and keeps for weeks and weeks.

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There isn’t a single thing in this salad that I didn’t just l-o-v-e. Freshly roasted beets, mildly salted Feta cheese, quinoa, arugula (or fresh greens), roasted hazelnuts and a just a little bit sweet pear vinegar dressing. Oh yum!

If you want to try a different kind of salad – this one with quinoa (a high protein grain) and fresh roasted beets – is worth making. Oh gosh, it was really nice.

The Bulgarian Feta is less salty than some, so you can eat slightly bigger chunks of it in a salad. Seek it out, if you have sources for something other than the usual high sodium Feta. You do need to toast the hazelnuts (they’re so much better if you toast them), and if they still have the skins on them, rub vigorously with a terrycloth towel after you toast them and most of the skins will come off. I can never get all the skin off, but enough so the nuts don’t have an overall bitter taste.

In all the years of cooking beets, I’ve never done them this way, the way Tarla Fallgatter made them at the cooking class. She bought beets all of about the same size (making for more even baking) and cut off all but about 2” of the stems on each one – leaving the tail on them too – if you cut the tail, the beet will bleed a lot more of its juices – same with cutting off the tops. Anyway, each beet is wrapped separately in foil, sealed up fairly well and placed in a RIMMED baking sheet or casserole dish. Something that’s just a little bit bigger than the beets are.  It may be hard to see – but those are about 5 separate foil packets, standing upright. Tarla strongly believes that beets roasted this way have a much more intense flavor – sweeter – and with a better texture. She’s a graduate of the Cordon Bleu School in Paris, so she ought to know!

Once baked, you need to open them up so they’ll cool a bit, then remove the skin, root end and stems. Allow to cool a bit more if they’re still hot. Wear a pair of plastic gloves if you’d prefer not to get your hands and fingernails purple for the rest of the day.

While the beets roast, work on the quinoa. This was a new way of preparing quinoa too – Tarla toasted the dry quinoa in a skillet for 2-3 minutes until the tiny grains were lightly toasted. They actually began to pop a little in the pan (like spices do); then you add the chicken stock and simmer covered for 15 minutes or so, or until they’re just tender.

The dressing is very simple – pear vinegar and sherry vinegar, honey mustard, olive oil and seasonings. The greens or arugula are tossed with some of the dressing, the beets (quartered) are tossed with a bit of the dressing (in a separate bowl), the cheese is cut up in cubes and when you add the quinoa, the quinoa sticks to the cheese – I thought it made a really beautiful looking salad. It’s easier to add the beets on top – that way each person will get an equal amount of beets.

What’s GOOD: every single thing about it – tasty, pretty, healthy. Worth making.
What’s NOT: just that it does take a bit of time to make everything (about an hour for the beets, 15 minutes or so for the quinoa, 10-15 for the hazelnuts. But I think you’ll hear raves.

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Really tasty red pepper soup (there’s no cream IN the soup, just drizzled on top) that’s very easy to make, and it’s topped with fresh basil shreds, some fresh corn, and then the drizzle of crème fraîche.

Sometimes when I’ve made a red pepper soup, the pepper part was just too acidic, or on the bitter side. It’s not the capsaicin, since that’s the hot factor, and bell peppers have just about nil of that. I don’t know what it is. But THIS soup didn’t have that, which was a good thing! Maybe it was the peppers themselves – their source, the soil, the time of year? Anybody an expert on bell peppers?

Well, that got me to thinking about a book I have that is a wealth of information about fruit and veggies. I’ll do a write-up on Tuesday about peppers in general. Glancing at the chapter on peppers I see 4 recipes: roasted red peppers stuffed with tuna, salad of roasted peppers and ricotta salata, peperonata (a kind of bell pepper sauce), and chile and zucchini braised in cream. I’ll make one of those. The author recommends the first recipe.

Back to the soup. It was so easy, except for roasting the red peppers and jalapeno. If you want to make it easier, cut the peppers into flat-type pieces, lay on foil, oil them a bit and bake them at 400° for 20-30 minutes, turning them a couple of times. Let them cool so you can handle them, then peel off the skins and trim the ribs off, plus discarding the seeds if there are any remaining.

While the peppers are roasting start the soup: sauté the onions, adding the garlic toward the end, then add the seasonings. You can use fresh tomatoes if they’re really in season – otherwise use super-tasty canned tomatoes (I like San Marzano, Muir Glen or Cento from Italy). The soup is simmered for a short time (30 minutes) then pureed in the blender. Reheat it, taste for seasoning, then pour out into serving bowls. The best part about this soup is the garnish – fresh corn cut off the cobb, fresh basil shreds and a drizzle of crème fraîche.  This recipe came from a cooking class with Tarla Fallgatter.

What’s GOOD: the fresh taste from the red bells and the garnishes. Loved the corn. Also the little bit of heat from the jalapeno pepper. Altogether delicious.
What’s NOT: absolutely nothing.

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Love rhubarb, like I do? You’ll want to try this biscuit-style upside down cake that’s as easy as can be to make. You’ll just need fresh rhubarb and everything else is likely in your pantry.

My latest issue of Saveur Magazine arrived recently and I read it cover-to-cover. An article about rhubarb captured my interest, though, when I saw some of the photos. With rhubarb in season, I decided to make this recipe first. They explained that this method of making an upside down cake is more reminiscent of an apple tarte tatin since you cook the juicy rhubarb in a cast iron skillet as you would with a tarte tatin (photo at left), then add the biscuit batter on top (see photo at right below) and bake it. As soon as you take it out of the oven you place a plate on top of the iron skillet and very carefully and quickly turn it upside down and plot, it all comes out as you see above. I used hot pads and was very quick about turning it over. There wasn’t any liquid to spill out, fortunately, or it could burn you. It’s all absorbed by the biscuit batter.

We ate it warm, which is the best way, I think. And since the cake part is more biscuit than it is cake, it’s most likely best eaten the day it’s made. I ended up with left overs which I portioned out into 3” wedges, wrapped in plastic, then in foil. If I find out it’s not good defrosted I’ll add a note here later.

Do serve it with ice cream or whipped cream, as the mixture needs something to cut the sweet of the rhubarb and moisten the biscuit cake. It’s not overly dry – that isn’t what I mean – but left more than a day, I’d think it might. Biscuits don’t keep well.

What’s GOOD: the rhubarb, for sure. But then, I love rhubarb in most of its guises. The cake wasn’t my favorite part, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t good. It was. It was a light dessert, I thought, although the calorie count doesn’t indicate so. Very tasty and a lovely presentation.

What’s NOT: really nothing except that you probably should eat this up the day you bake it.

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Make this. Oh yes, make this! It’s healthy, relatively simple to prepare, and it’s just loaded with flavor. You need to like chiles, however, and spicy food.

Many years ago I must have gotten the original of this recipe from Phillis Carey. My old print-out says it’s hers, but I didn’t find the recipe in any of her 3 cookbooks. And actually, the original was for Cornish game hens, not chicken. But my notes about this recipe said it was really delicious, so I made some changes to it, decided to grill the chicken rather than bake it, and I changed-up the sauce to serve with it too. So let’s just say the recipe was inspired by Phillis!

The photo above shows a half of a chicken breast – bone in – in its finished form. The chicken was marinated for awhile in an orange juice, oil and chipotle mixture, seared on the grill, moved to indirect heat to cook through, then served with a quick sweet salsa at the end.  The salsa was the royal crown of the dish, I’d say. I bought fresh salsa and after melting a little bit of red jalapeno jelly on the range, and allowing it to cool, I added it to the chilled salsa and it was spooned over the top. I wanted to lick the plate – and it’s not that there’s anything so unusual in it – except that you don’t expect salsa to be sweet. Yet it is, and it’s just perfect on the chicken!

What’s GOOD: it’s a really different taste – the chicken is moist, since you take it off the grill when it just reaches 155°. And the salsa. Well, that’s the best part.

What’s NOT: nothing for me – I liked it, but you do need to appreciate a bit of heat and sweet with the chicken to enjoy it fully!

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