Even using the sous vide, the prep work may require a couple of steps – as in this case. First I soaked the pork chops in an apple brine for 24 hours, then they went into the sous vide for several hours with some seasonings. Worth the effort for sure.

After several weeks, I’m still learning my way through using the SousVide Supreme Sous Vide Water Oven. The process doesn’t come naturally like stove top sautéing, or grilling or simmering. But I’m getting the hang of it. This time I pulled some pork chops out of the freezer that I’d already prepped. I’d bought one of those big packages of boneless thick pork chops at Costco. Here’s what I did to the whole batch:

1. Soaked them in a big Ziploc bag in Tyler Florence’s Spiced Apple Brine. For 24 hours. I drained it, then . . .
2. Put two small chops each into vacuum pouches (still left open at this point).
3. Added to each pouch a little sprinkling of capers, about 1 teaspoon of Dijon mustard and kind of mushed it around on one side of the meat, about 1/2 teaspoon of fresh chopped rosemary and some pepper. Then I sealed them up with the vacuum sealer.

At this point I froze them so it would be easy to prepare once they were defrosted, which I did 24 hours ahead of serving. The day of, I put them in 131° water in the Sous Vide, and let them cook for about 6-7 hours (the range is 5-8 hours – meaning they’d be done in 5 but they can hold at that temp for up to 8 hours). My DH fired up the gas grill and just seared them for about 1 1/2 minutes per side. I made a kind of a raita sauce on the side (sour cream, fresh chives, minced cucumber, lemon juice, a little jot of champagne vinegar, some fresh herbs, salt, pepper). I’d also done some of the pork in a curry kind of flavoring mix, but none of us cared for it much – so that’s why I made the raita style side. Raita goes mostly with Indian food (you can see the yellow curry in the upper pouch), but it was nice enough with this.

So how was it? Wonderful! The meat was tender as could be – it was perfectly cooked through, pink in the middle too. If you are cooking pork from a raw state the USDA recommends you cook it to 143° to kill the pathogens. But using a sous vide, several hours of that slow cooking provides the same bug-killing at 131° (according to my sous vide information). In my sous vide cookbook, it indicates that pasteurization of meat (beef, lamb, pork) occurs  after 2 hours (1 1/4 inch thick meat). Thinner meat takes less time. So even though the meat was pink in the middle, it was completely cooked and safe.

What I liked: just how tender the meat was, and how flavorful the little seasoning in it was. Brining was definitely the way to go.

What I didn’t like: really nothing. I’d definitely make this again. I’ll likely make a different sauce.

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My daughter-in-law Karen told me about this salad and raved as she handed me the recipe, telling me I had to try it. Indeed. It’s SO very unusual – literally it’s shaved raw asparagus [done with a potato peeler], red onion, canned white cannellini beans, a citrus dressing that’s almost negligible on the oil side, some walnuts, and I added some chives and a few little slivers of kumquat (not in the original recipe). Totally worth making.

Until recently I’d never even heard of the magazine, Clean Eating. My daughter in law subscribes to it and has mentioned several recipes she’s tried and really liked. In case you haven’t heard of it either, here’s a sentence I copied out from their website: [Clean Eating] is all about consuming whole food in its most natural state, or as close to it as possible. And when she handed me the print-out from their website, she said I just had to try this recipe for the shaved asparagus salad. With asparagus in season, I wanted to give this one a go right away, before asparagus disappears from our local markets.

There you can see the shaved asparagus. The ridges on each sliver are from the peeler itself. Everything you shave with this peeler has that distinct marking.

That peeler is a treasure in my gadget arsenal – one of my favorite things (shown in photo at left) – full name Messermeister Pro Touch Swivel Peeler. I use this thing nearly every day in my kitchen. Anyway, I grabbed each asparagus stalk and peeled away, which gave me a really big pile of asparagus. And no, you don’t cook the asparagus – it’s shaved raw and served raw.

I prepared a half of a recipe, which would serve about 5 people, and used about a pound of asparagus, plus one can of cannellini beans.

As it happened, I cut off the very bottoms of all the asparagus stalks, but probably I didn’t have to do that, as I could have used those fibrous ends to hold onto. So I ended up with these little nubbins, which I tossed out. Actually, I ate all the little spikes from each spear I took a photo of the last one before I ate it :-).

You don’t need to make the dressing separately – it’s just fresh orange juice, fresh lemon juice, a little jot of champagne vinegar and you do toss the asparagus in a tiny amount of olive oil. The 10-servings salad calls for one tablespoon of oil. I made just half a recipe, as I mentioned and I still used a full tablespoon. And I just squeezed one orange and a half of a lemon into the bowl. So my measurements were not exact. Then you add some Pecorino cheese shavings (delicious addition since I love-love Pecorino cheese almost more than Parmigiano), fresh basil and toasted walnuts. Because we have fresh chives abounding in my herb garden, I threw in some of that, and our kumquat tree is just loaded with them, so I added some slivered peel (about 4-5 of them) to the salad as well. Those latter items weren’t in the original recipe. My DIL added fresh shaved fennel to her salad (I didn’t have any, so obviously that was left out of mine).

On the website’s recipe they suggest that if you have any leftovers of this, add a can of tuna and you have a full lunch salad. My friend Linda came for dinner, and we ate ample portions each – but we have just enough leftover, I think, to serve 2 people a small serving for lunch tomorrow.

What I liked: I understand the “clean eating” idea – this salad is just simple, but substantial and tasty food, with a “clean” citrus dressing that just adds, but doesn’t distract from the flavors of the asparagus and beans. I’d definitely make this again. The ONLY thing I’ll do differently next time is soak the onion for half an hour in water to remove some of the raw sharpness. Do note the very low calorie and low fat content here – this is a very healthy salad!

What I didn’t like: absolutely nothing. This is a definite keeper!

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Whether or not you have a sous vide, you could still make the deliciously spicy (horseradish) and pungent (Dijon mustard), yet sweet (honey) and herby (fresh mint) glaze that goes on the steaks. I loved the glaze and would definitely make it again. The steaks were good too!

We had offered to take ribeyes to our son and daughter-in-law. For Sunday dinner. So, I decided to sous vide them, since I hadn’t done that before, with steaks. $35 worth of steaks (3 very thick choice ones from Costco) went into individual pouches (pictured left, in the rack that comes with the SousVide Supreme Sous Vide Water Oven. I cooked them at 131° for about 2 1/2 hours. The sous vide directions say you can cook these for 2 to 8 hours. What that means is they’re done in 2 hours, and you can hold them at that temp for a max of 8 hours. After 8 hours the meat will begin changing its chemistry (at least that’s what I think it means). I quick-chilled them in a big bowl of water and ice once I removed them from the sous vide and took them to our kids’.

Once we were about ready to eat I removed the pouches from the refrigerator, slathered on the glaze (more about that below), put them on a hot-hot stove-top grill and seared them. I’m still learning all these techniques – and I learned another one on this occasion. When you try to sear cold steaks that have been cooked sous vide, you need to leave them out at room temp for awhile. I seared them, cut into them and discovered that the searing (about 1 to 1 1/2 minutes per side) didn’t heat the meat all the way through, so the centers were still a bit tepid. I put them back on the grill for another 3-4 minutes total and they were just perfect. It would be ideal to open the cooked pouches (when they’re at 131°) slather on the glaze and put them directly on the grill. Next time I’ll do that.

Now the GLAZE . . . it’s so very simple to make. Stir in a small bowl the mustard, bottled horseradish, honey, mint and pepper (I didn’t add any salt). The only thing you need to remember is that with honey in this glaze, it will make the steaks caramelize very quickly – long cooking would make the glaze burn. Soooo, if you make this glaze for regularly-cooked barbecued steaks, don’t put it on the steaks until they’re just about finished – like during the last 3-4 minutes of cooking. You could also put it only on the top (glaze the top after you’ve seared one side and turned it over). The sauce is piquant. Mustardy. Spicy and herby. This recipe came from Jason Logsdon’s sous vide book Sous Vide Grilling.

What I liked: I loved the sauce. I’d have liked it served at the table too, so I could have dipped each piece of meat into it. A lot of the sauce ended up on the grill itself, stuck to it (I used a ridged grill to get grill marks). The steak was tender enough (not the most tender I’ve ever had) but it was consistently pink through the whole steak, which I liked too. The sous vide approach went fine – I’d just make sure to take them out of the pouches and go directly onto the outdoor grill next time.

What I didn’t like: really nothing specific. I could have wished the steak itself was more flavorful – seems to me like some steaks you buy just don’t have a lot of beefy flavor anymore. Why is that?

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I know this doesn’t LOOK like an apple cobbler. And it doesn’t really taste like what I usually associate with the words “apple cobbler.” What this is, is an apple-pie type filling with a delicious top crust. But it’s not like a regular pie crust. It’s a kind of shortbread or cookie type top. And believe it or not, it’s also really low on sugar. That makes it a winner in my book.

With a bunch of apples in my refrigerator and a dessert I needed to make for dinner guests, I went searching for a recipe that suited me. This was it – a recipe I found at Simply Recipes a few years ago. I read what Elise had to say about this and knew I needed to try it. First you cook the peeled, cored and sliced apples with just a little bit of sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon, flour and butter. You don’t cook this long, just enough to take the edge off raw apples. It takes more apples than you might think – I think I used 6 and it could have used more. Elise’s recipe calls for 3 pounds. I didn’t weigh mine, so I really don’t know how many I had – surely it was more than 2 pounds, but it might not have been a full 3 pounds. It filled up the pie plate, but once it baked, the apples kind of slumped. Mostly it’s because I used some Gala apples – not just Granny Smiths that totally hold their shape during baking/cooking.

The crust is a bit different – it has the usual kind of ingredients, but then it has orange zest and a bunch of chopped up crystallized ginger. You can vaguely make out the little bumpy things all over the raw crust, shown at left. That photo was before I baked it, obviously.

This crust also contained a little bit of butter (just 2 tablespoons) and a cup of heavy cream. That’s what provided the necessary fat to give the crust a delicious crunchy texture.

What I really liked about it was the minimal sugar necessary to make this. As I mentioned, Elise’s recipe calls for just Granny Smiths, but I had just 2 of them, and I had a bunch of Galas. Since Galas are sweeter than Granny Smiths, I cut down even more on the sugar. Elise’s recipe called for 1/4 cup in the filling. I used 2 T. of Splenda instead, so halved it. You’ll need to decide, based on what kind of apples you use, as to how much sugar to add. In the crust, it calls for 1/4 cup also – I used a scant measure of real sugar (not Splenda) as I think real sugar is more necessary in pastry. I could have put in half sugar and half Splenda, though, and it probably would have been just fine.

There’s a photo of the cut. It sure looks like apple pie, doesn’t it. Nope! One little tip I should add to the instructions – I used a pizza peel to slide the crust onto the top of the pie. The crust was fragile. It was thick and weighty, actually, but it was a bit on the dry side, so I knew if I tried to pick it up or roll it onto the rolling pin it would fall apart completely. The pizza peel worked perfectly and I was able to slide it gently into place over the apple filling. (I’ll also tell you that the crust was delicious raw – our son-in-law’s mother Ann was visiting and she and I polished off the scraps in short order!)

What I liked: everything about it – the taste, the texture, the apples, the ginger in it, the fact that there was a lot less sugar than usual. Loved the crust. We served it with whipped cream on top. Loverly, it ‘twas.

What I didn’t like: absolutely nothing. Definitely a make again recipe. Thank you, Elise!

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It was about time I got around to making this salad – it’s been in my to-try file for years. Don’t tell anybody, but this is very low calorie. It’s also delicious, crunchy and a perfect accompaniment to grilled meat. In this case I served it alongside pulled pork sliders.

It was about 4 years ago and I was reading Smitten Kitchen’s blog. She raved. I mean she raved about this salad. I put it into my MasterCook to-try file and promptly forgot it. I have hundreds and hundreds of recipes in my to-try file. I should stop, right now, reading any more food blogs, magazines or cookbooks because I have enough recipes to last me until I’m at least 389 years old. But I can’t seem to help myself. I really do try NOT to buy more cookbooks. But gosh, darned, so many people just write the most beautiful books, blogs and magazine articles! I just can’t help myself!

So anyway, needing a salad to go with the pulled pork sliders I made the other night, I thought a cabbage salad seemed appropriate and this salad fit just great. It was incredibly easy to make. Now the original recipe (which came from Gourmet magazine) called for Napa cabbage. Visiting two markets, I found only Savoy, so that’s what was used in this. Savoy and Napa are similar, although they definitely look different. But both cabbages have more tender leaves, or maybe they’re just thinner-leafed. Anyway, you probably could make this with regular cabbage, but I truly liked the Savoy.

The buttermilk dressing is so very light. It’s flavored with some finely minced shallot, and a little bit of sugar (I used Splenda). Fresh chives, radishes and celery round out the cabbage. That’s it. I liked the look of the radishes on top, so I actually left them in a separate little baggie and tossed some dressing with them and sprinkled them decoratively on the top of the salad. If you make the full 4-cup cabbage recipe, you’ll use all of the dressing. Next time I might make more dressing – not only is it good, the salad might need a bit more. It could also be used on a regular green salad too. Don’t let it sit long, though, on a regular green salad. Because the dressing is mostly buttermilk, it will wilt tender green leaves.

What I liked: well, the calorie count, for one. And truly, you’d never know it’s so low calorie. It’s overall delicious. Yes, I’ll be making it again. When I used the left over dressing I added just a tad more mayo to it (I didn’t quite have enough to dress another cabbage salad) and I liked it a lot. That would “up” the calorie and fat content of the salad, though. It’s really awfully good as it is!

What I didn’t like: nada, nothing.

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Another experiment with sous vide cooking. This time I made pork shoulder (pork butt), cooked it at 140° for 48 hours. And I served it with a very tart North Carolina vinegar sauce instead of the usual ketchup-based barbecue sauce that’s more typical. Mostly I did that because my DH is a diabetic and very rarely eats pulled pork because the traditional BBQ sauce just sends his blood sugar skyrocketing.

At least once a week I’m experimenting with my SousVide Supreme Sous Vide Water Oven. Not every dish I’ve made has made it to a post on my blog, as I’m not experienced enough yet. One pork dish I made was not very good (pork chops were too thin, I think, so it overcooked). I’m liking the long, slow cooking for more things – the less tender cuts. Not steaks and such – they are best with relatively little sous vide cooking. I had a big chunk of pork in the freezer – I’d purchased a gigantic pork shoulder a month or so ago, at a great price and cut it up into smaller cooking portions. But I didn’t have a sous vide cooker then. So the meat was just vacuum sealed with nothing whatsoever in it. I decided to just go with it that way. Nothing else in the pouch but the meat. No salt. No pepper. No onions or seasonings of any kind. I knew I’d need to doctor it up with seasonings later.

So I did some reading about barbecue sauces. Goodness, but there are a lot of different types. I knew there was a Memphis style, and St. Louis style, but that was about it. Referring to one of my Steven Raichlen books, Barbecue! Bible: Sauces, Rubs, and Marinades, Bastes, Butters, and Glazes, I hunted through all the dozens of possible permutations, trying to find one that was low on sugar. We’re mostly tuned into such sauces containing lots and lots of ketchup. Then I read about the sauce that is the favorite with folks in North Carolina. It’s a vinegar sauce and has nary a teaspoon of tomato in it – like ketchup or tomato paste.

So here’s what’s in it – onions sliced thin, apple cider vinegar, water (not pictured), red chili flakes, sugar, salt and pepper. It’s not cooked. You merely combine the ingredients in a bowl (non-reactive) and stir it up. I made it ahead because I wanted the onions to soften a bit in there, which they did. Not only did they soften in texture, but the soaking takes away some of the fresh astringency from raw onions. I covered it and just let it sit out on the counter for several hours.

What you need to know about this sauce is that you combine it with the shredded pork and the meat just absorbs a lot of the vinegar sauce. No, it’s not sour (because the meat has a lot of sweetness to it). You’d think it would be sour. I was unsure enough about this sauce that I took a piece of pork and gingerly dipped it into the sauce to sample it. Oh my. GOOD. Amazing, I thought.

I cut up some green cabbage and put just a little bit of the vinegar sauce on it and served that with the sliders – to put onto the sandwich itself. The meat – so tender and juicy. I added about a cup of the onions and vinegary sauce to it and let it sit for about 5 minutes before I set out the slider buns, the meat, the cabbage. I let everyone make their own sliders. I also made a delicious cabbage salad which I’ll post in a couple of days.

What I liked: the texture and taste of the pulled pork. It was incredibly tender after 48 hours of sous vide. The vinegar sauce was outstanding. I loved it! For left overs I put out regular barbecue sauce (bottled) and some eaters had some of that too.

What I didn’t like: nothing. It was really, really good.

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. . .This recipe hardly even deserves an entire recipe box listing – it’s just pork shoulder, vacuum sealed, done in the sous vide for 48 hours. Done.

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Have you made lemon curd before? I’ve made it oodles of times, but not since last March. I wrote it up here on my blog then. I read a description of lemon curd in the America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook – they called some versions teeth-achingly sweet. Gosh, yes. That’s what mine was in 2011. The folks at ATK decided to fix it, and yes, they did. This is my new go-to lemon curd recipe. I didn’t enhance the photo at all – it’s all the egg yolks that give it that deep golden color.

I’d offered to take lemon curd to a friend’s home for a St. Patrick’s Day book group meeting. Each year the hostess and her wonderful husband make an Irish repast for our group. And mid-way through our book meeting they also serve multiple desserts. They make raisin scones too, and it’s for the scones that I usually offer to make lemon curd.

Remembering that last year’s version was too sweet, I pulled out cookbook after cookbook and compared the recipes. Some had nearly double the amount of sugar per lemon juice quantity of others. Whoa! No wonder I was overwhelmed with the sweetness! I should have just gone to my well-used The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. Every recipe turns out superbly from that cookbook. With copious lemons on our Meyer trees, it came together in a hurry. I really liked the addition of a few tablespoons of heavy cream at the end. It just smooths it out, somehow. I chose not to strain it (to remove the bits of lemon zest and any eggy things). I chilled it in a bowl over ice and gave it to the hostess. But not without a couple of teaspoons to taste, of course! It’ll be my forever favorite, I suspect.

What I liked: it’s easy. Delicious. Just the right amount of sugar to lemon ratio. It will keep for several weeks too, if it were to last that long. I gave all of it to my friend, so there isn’t any left over here at my house! Guess I’ll just have to make it again. I scaled down the recipe to use 4 egg yolks and 1 whole egg, FYI.

What I didn’t like: nothing at all. Perfection.

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Even if you don’t own a sous vide, you could make this in your slow cooker on low. And in either case, make the microwave creamy mustard sauce to serve on the side.

It seems that the only time of year I make a corned beef is in March, near to St. Patrick’s Day. Otherwise if they’re available in the markets I just don’t “see” them. I bought mine at Trader Joe’s. And if you haven’t noticed, corned beef is mighty pricey! I was shocked. My small 3-pound corned beef was nearly $17. And it would barely serve 6 people. But I wanted to try cooking it in my SousVide Supreme Sous Vide Water Oven. For those of you who aren’t into sous vide, just skip down below to the sauce part if that’s what interests you.

Consulting a variety of sources about the sous vide corned beef (2 cookbooks and about 3-4 online recipes, plus a phone call to my sous vide expert, Russ), I finally decided to cook it for 10 hours close to 180°. By the time I decided what to do, it had gone past the point that I could cook it for 48 hours. I was down to 24, so obviously I did the 10-hour cook. Actually I set the temp to 178°.

To say that I had some difficulty would be an understatement. I’m new enough to sous vide that I was in alien territory when I came into the kitchen, 3 hours into the 10 hour cooking and found the lid of the Supreme standing nearly upright, tipped up at about 75°. At 8 that morning I’d pressed the corned beef into the Supreme’s accompanying rack, and placed the rack in Supreme, with the meat on the bottom rung, put the lid on top and left the house. In the interim time, somehow, fluid had rendered out of the corned beef which creates a gas, so there was a whole lot of air in the pouch. The gas/air was a lot stronger than the rack in holding the roast underwater and it had actually turned the rack upside down, hence popping off the top of the machine. So, the beef was more or less floating on top. Not exactly what sous vide is all about.

I had to manhandle the darned thing to get it turned back down-under, on went the lid and I put a bunch of book on top of the lid. No more mishaps exactly. BUT, after 10 hours I dismantled everything and lo and behold, the roast had come loose again and had pushed itself toward the top. About an inch of the roast was up above water line. Sigh. But, since I cooked it at 178° I knew the meat was done. No fluid had leaked out of the bag – at all – and no water had leaked into the roast. It’s a chemistry thing, though, about the gas. Next time I will have to figure out a way to weight-down the meat – something heavy that will sit on top of the meat and not have enough room to roll over when the gas creates inside. I have one particular casserole dish in mind that will probably work. Or maybe I’ll need to put a real honest brick, wrapped in foil and put into a Ziploc bag to place on top – except that a brick might turn on its side, so that probably won’t work. It would have to a a big cement paver just the right size as the interior of the Supreme!

The roast rested a bit while I made the veggies and the delicious mustard cream sauce. The meat was sliced (easily) and served on heated plates, along with some simmered potatoes, cabbage and onions. The SAUCE: it was quick to make – in the microwave. It’s all the usual steps to make a cream sauce (half and half and chicken broth for the liquid), but just requires opening the door of the microwave through several steps. It took about 4-5 minutes to make it, though. Easy enough.

What I liked: perfect texture, still moist, sliced easily, good red meat color. I’ll probably try it again at long, slow cooking, but I liked this one just fine. The SAUCE: oh gosh. Delicious. I liked it a lot as an accompaniment to corned beef. It was also just fine on the left overs.

What I didn’t like: nothing, really. I’d make them both again.

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. . .

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I know, not all of you live near a Trader Joe’s. Too bad! It is just the greatest store. We shop there for most of our food products these days. Today I just want to mention a couple of their newer items that I’d recommend. As you may know already, if products don’t “take off,” they simply stop stocking them. Period. I can’t tell you how many of their things have disappeared from their shelves – because people just didn’t buy enough of them, I suppose. So, since I want these two things to stay on their shelves, you might want to help me keep them there . . .

There are the Mac ‘n Cheese Bites. They’re little rounds (see the uncut ones in the picture) of mac ‘n cheese, lightly battered or crumbed, fried and frozen. You bake them (from a frozen state) in a hot oven for 10 minutes, let them rest a few minutes (otherwise you’d burn your mouth for sure) and serve. I cut one in half so you could see the interior. Absolutely delicious. If you like mac ‘n cheese, you will just love these little guys. They might also work well for picky children or grandchildren. Our grandson was very enamored with these, as I expected he would be. The adults were too. I think there are 10 in a package and they disappeared in a flash.

Here’s the other product. Our daughter-in-law, Karen, introduced us to these. Ordinarily I buy very little dried fruit. However, they do make a great snack item. These are pressed with a ground chile mixture. And no, the pieces are not overly hot. Spicy yes. Hot, not really. Tasty? Oh my yes. Look for the Chile Spiced Mango next time you visit. The bites were delicious with some cheese, I’ll tell you!

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A salad that’s a bit different – different because you leave the Romaine leaves whole (and you could actually pick these up by hand if you composed the salad carefully), drizzle them with a walnut oil and sherry vinegar dressing, then garnish with slices of bright orange slices (I used Cara Cara, a type of Navel), Pecorino cheese and some easy glazed walnuts.

We were going to the home of friends for dinner and I was asked to bring a salad. The only thing I knew was that we were having pasta. I could have made a regular green salad, but since I had 3 Cara Cara oranges that needed to be used, I used a Joanne Weir recipe instead. From her cookbook, Joanne Weir’s More Cooking in the Wine Country. I knew this salad would showcase the oranges beautifully, and I assumed the relatively simple walnut oil dressing would go well enough with pasta. My only deviation from Joanne Weir’s recipe was to use Pecorino cheese (she suggested Manchego from Spain, or Parmigiano-Reggiano). I had a nice wedge of Pecorino with truffles in it and it worked very well with this. I used a lot less cheese than called for – and I didn’t use all the dressing, either (great, some leftover for another day!).

The Romaine leaves (using the hearts only) were separated gently (I trimmed off the base, up about 2 to 2 1/2 inches) and sort of flattened them as best I could onto a large platter. Next I used a big spoon to strategically drizzle some of the dressing on each and every leaf. In case any of the guests ate it in hand, you’d want each leaf to be dressing-enhanced. Next I grouped most of the oranges at one end of the platter (that was the way to cookbook’s photo showed it). If I were truly making this finger food I’d have cut the oranges into much smaller pieces and placed the equivalent of about 1/2 of a slice on each leaf. I wasn’t, so I didn’t. Therefore when serving (using a pie wedge, actually, which worked well), each person took a leaf or two and an orange slice or two. Then I shaved the Pecorino cheese all over and lastly added the glazed walnuts (they’re tossed with walnut oil, sugar, salt and pepper and oven roasted) on top.

THE MAKE AHEAD PART: The walnuts can be baked ahead. The Romaine can be prepped ahead and left chilled in a plastic bag. The cheese could be shaved ahead, but really I think doing it at the last minute was just as easy. The dressing can be made several hours ahead too (and left at room temp). So it was easily assembled at someone else’s home.

What I liked: the fact that the salad was different looking; that the dressing was composed with some walnut oil (I like walnut oil); the oranges, definitely. They added a really deliciousness to the salad. Oh, how could I forget the walnuts? They were good too – great texture addition.

What I didn’t like: nothing at all. I’ll be making it again for sure.

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