Cole slaw is such an American salad. It’s so 4th of July or picnic or backyard barbecue. But it’s also good with some kinds of winter dinners too. I served this with the Easy Cassoulet I made last weekend. It was a perfect foil to the pork, kielbasa and chicken bean dish that night.

It’s a recipe I’ve had in my to-try file since last summer when Kalyn posted it on her blog, Kalyn’s Kitchen. The recipe came from her sister, Val. It was scrumptious. I just loved this salad – I have cut down just a bit on the sugar (I used Splenda). If you want a really sweet dressing, by all means add more, but I thought it was fine with just a bit less. And the amount of parsley is correct – it uses a lot, and is a wonderful flavor enhancer. Along with the green onions. It’s so simple to make – I chopped up everything ahead of time (don’t mix the red and green cabbage together, though, as the red cabbage will bleed into the green), and I mixed up the dressing. It took about 45 seconds to toss it together. It would be a great take-along for a potluck dinner. A keeper of a recipe, no question. Thanks to Kalyn and her sister, Val!

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A year ago: Filet of Sole with Almond Sauce (a Julia Child recipe)
Two years ago: About Penzey’s, the herb and spice store
Three years ago: Crunchy Shrimp with Couscous and Spicy Sauce (a salad, and a big favorite)

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Well, now. Let me just say, right here at the beginning, that this dish is just off-the-charts delicious. It may not look like that much in the photo – I mean, it is a casserole. But oh, the flavors in this! And although it’s called an easy cassoulet, it’s not something you can throw together in 30 minutes. Nope. Probably takes about 1 1/2 hours or so to do it all.

In case you aren’t familiar with cassoulet (pronounced cass-eau-lay in French), let me just enlighten you. It means a slow-cooked bean stew or casserole. Typically a cassoulet contains some pork, some sausage and some duck. This version contains pork (chops), smoked sausage (kielbasa chunks) and some chicken thighs. And canned beans, to make it as easy as possible. It has some other things, minor stars, to be sure, to add character and flavor or texture. I think I could eat this dish at least once a week – and likely in Southern France, many families do, with some leftovers from the last dish incorporated into the new dish, to keep the flavors moving onward.

The below photo shows the cassoulet with the topping – the croutons that are crumbled on top just before serving, along with the fresh herbs – Italian parsley and thyme. The meats (the pork chops and chicken and the coins of kielbasa) are scooped into a middle layer in between a bean layer on the bottom, and another bean layer on top. I topped mine with a thin layer of grated Parmesan cheese. Once it bakes until it’s bubbling hot, you add a thin layer of croutons and sprinkle on some more fresh herbs and serve immediately. To absolute raves.

This recipe, with a couple of modifications, came from Cathy Thomas, the food editor of our local newspaper, in a December, 2010 article. The original of this easy version started with a recipe from Bon Appetit. Cathy Thomas tweaked it some. She says this is one of her favorite company meals. You can make a double batch if you’re feeding a crowd. Now, I did tweak it a little bit too, from Cathy’s version, as I mentioned above – I didn’t have smoked pork chops. I had regular pork chops – so I used those and then added in two slices of smoked, thick sliced bacon. The other change I made is probably very non-traditional – I sprinkled the top of the casserole with some freshly grated Parmesan cheese. I wanted that umami taste. The croutons are a last minute garnish – I toasted the fresh bread cubes  (from a regular baguette) tossed in a little bit of oil for about 15 minutes in the oven, then I sealed them in a quart-sized ziploc bag and used a pounder to break the cubes into smaller pieces. Those, then, were sprinkled on the top just before serving, along with the fresh herbs that gave the dish some color. The croutons give a delicious crunch to every bite, and they soak up a little liquid from the casserole too. Definitely don’t eliminate the croutons – they help make the dish, in my opinion.

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A year ago: Shchi (a Russian pork and cabbage soup)
Two years ago: A silly post – 25 random things about me you never knew, and probably don’t care about anyway!
Three years ago: Shells with Pancetta and Spinach

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As I was making this relatively simple appetizer, I thought it was quite similar to an English potted cheese. Technically, a potted dish (in the English vernacular) means a meat concoction with a layer of fat on top. This one, though, is cheese based – it’s all mixed up together and when it chills, it becomes an homogeneous cheese. I topped it with walnuts to give it some texture.

Preparing this was very easy – it has relatively few ingredients – butter, shallots, garlic, brandy, heavy cream and Roquefort cheese. That’s it. The shallots are cooked in butter, the garlic is added in for a very brief cooking time, then you add brandy and cook that down. Then cream and cook that down. Then you add in crumbled cheese (I used true Roquefort – but you could use a good blue or Gorgonzola). It’s a pourable mixture at that point. Into a ramekin it goes, almost full to the top. It was chilled for a couple of hours – it firms up during that time – then I added the walnuts on top just before serving.

I have no idea where I got this recipe. It’s scribbled in my handwriting on a piece of paper and with the cryptic instructions I wrote, I’d guess I was watching a cooking show, but haven’t been able to find it online anywhere. So, who knows where it came from? The version I wrote out used Gorgonzola. I had Roquefort on hand, so that’s what this version contains. This was delicious! I’d make it again any day, and may even do it again soon. It could easily be doubled – and put into two ramekins if you have a bigger group to feed. It’s particularly good with a nice glass of complex red wine – like pinot noir, or cabernet, or shiraz.

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A year ago: Oranges – everything you’d like to know about them
Two years ago: Easy Breakfast Pineapple Biscuits

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Ah .  .  . I’m finally back in the kitchen. It’s SO wonderful to feel good after so many days of a bad cold. Of not being able to taste. Or to be able to breathe, hardly. Or to swallow without pain. I just lost eight days of my life. Although, I did completely empty my Tivo recordings.

One of them was an Ina Garten Barefoot Contessa segment on Parmesan chicken. So it was the first thing I wanted to make. And in the interim, I’d received an email from someone at Frieda’s Produce. There are a few perks of being a food blogger – once in awhile I’m approached by a company, asking if I’d like to sample their products. The wholesaler has offered specialty produce to grocery stores for decades. Frieda Caplan actually introduced kiwi to California, years ago.

Perhaps the marketing person had read my blog and knew I was already a big fan of lemons, period. Meyer lemons in particular. That my favorite ice cream is made with Meyer lemon juice and zest. Or that I adore lemon juice in nearly anything! In any case, it took me about 30 nanoseconds to say yes. They kindly asked if I liked the product, would I mention the company on my blog. Sure thing! If you’re interested in knowing more about Freida’s I’ve included a paragraph at the bottom. You may be able to find Friedas products at your local grocery store (here in Southern California they’re available at Ralphs, Albertson’s, Bristol Farms, Lucky, Wal-Mart, Safeway, Vons, Whole Foods, and Trader Joe’s, among many others). If you want to find out where to buy Freida’s products in your area, go to this section of Frieda’s website and input your state to see. She markets to all U.S. states and Canada.

Back to the recipe. On nights when you might need a quick chicken throw-together dinner, this could fill the bill in a snap. Boneless, skinless chicken breasts are pounded out thinly, dipped in a seasoned flour, then egg, then in a bread crumb and Parmesan mixture before being lightly sautéed in a bit of olive oil and butter. While it’s cooking (not long – you’d best have made the dressing ahead) you chop up a nice little salad – Ina did hers with lovely light and dark field greens like arugula and mache – I had only Romaine on hand. Ina used an extra-simple lemon juice and olive oil combo with just salt and pepper. I prefer my own lemon-juice based dressing that also contains just a bit of blue cheese in it. If you want to use Ina’s version, by all means do. I just like the added dimension and layer of flavor.

About Frieda’s: Obviously one very smart cookie, Frieda Caplan began selling produce at the Los Angeles Produce Market in 1962. She brought a variety of more unusual products to her produce stand over the years, many that were unknown in the U.S. at the time. She introduced kiwis, shallots, cherimoyas, those small doughnut-shaped peaches, sugar snap peas and habanero peppers, among others. Obviously she began distributing produce further and further away, not just at the humble produce stand in LA! I heard her interviewed on local radio many years ago and began seeking out her products – when I could find them. Frieda’s Produce is still a family-run company, (she’s Chairman of the Board) although her two daughters manage the firm now. A great success story for a woman in the 1960’s to enter the then male-dominated produce sector. Good for Frieda, I say!

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A year ago: Make-Ahead Coffeecake (yes, really, make the batter the night before, bake in the AM)
Two years ago: Chicken a l’Orange (can’t say that this was a particular favorite for me)
Three years ago: Coconut Banana Bread (and low-fat to boot – delicious)

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The middle of winter often provides us with the most stunning of sunsets. That is a view from our backyard looking out to the ocean, 15 miles off. In the far distance, those hills way out there, are Catalina Island, which are 25 miles from the coastline. The pale color between the dark land and the hills is actually the ocean. It’s only on rare occasions when we can actually SEE the ocean.

There hasn’t been a whole lot of cooking going on in our house because I’ve been down with a really awful cold (upper respiratory infection). I seem to get one of these every single year. As I write this, I’ve been sick for 7 days. That’s in down. Sick. Three of those days I lived in my pajamas, I was so sick. As I write this, I think I’ve begun to turn a corner, so I’ll be back in the kitchen soon. Actually I did walk out to the edge of our back patio to take that picture the other night. We had been having a very balmy summer-like few days (temps in the 70’s).

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That’s sliced pot roast in the foreground, laid partly on pasta, and the sort-of red sauce that got whizzed up in the food processor after cooking the meat in the pressure cooker.

I’m on a kitchen mission. A mission to work more diligently to clean out my freezer. I not only have a huge full freezer in my kitchen, but I have a second lower-drawer freezer in the refrigerator/freezer in our garage. That latter freezer holds mostly meat. And it holds a LOT. Enough that, were we to have a catastrophe of major proportions, I think we could live (with a generator, mind you, keeping the meat frozen) for at least 3 months without buying any meat. At a guess, 3 months. Veggies – well that’s a different matter. I have some canned stuff and a few frozen bags, but mostly my freezer is full of meat products, at least 5 pounds of different kinds of nuts, a few oddball things like frozen limeade, squeezed lemon juice from our Meyer lemon trees, chutneys of a few varieties, and some ordinary things like chili, soup (lots), bread, bacon, sausage that we have for breakfast most days, a few cookies, one dessert I made a couple of weeks ago, and some chipotle chiles.

My DH, darling that he is, often tells people how much meat we have in our reserve freezer, and that all he must buy is a Coleman stove and we’d be in business. We could set up a local soup kitchen. But we’d need that stove first, which we haven’t purchased. We should. All part of earthquake or emergency preparedness. We don’t have a generator, either. So, the next best thing is to start eating up the meat.

Therefore, I defrosted a 3-pound chunk of boneless chuck roast a few days ago. It was nicely sealed up in plastic (I have one of those FoodSaver things that seals foods of all kinds so they don’t get freezer burn). My guess is that there are other people out there like me – who really know how to pack a freezer. Right? We’re almost to the point that our kitchen freezer door must be opened carefully – like Fibber McGee’s closet, for fear something will fall out and break your toe. Most of you readers are too young to remember Fibber McGee and Molly, a long-running radio program (1935 – 1959), where one of the long-standing jokes was about somebody inadvertently opening the hall closet to a long, noisy crash of stuff. I vaguely remember the program because my parents loved the show. Once we got a television (about 1946, when I was 5) we didn’t listen to much radio anymore. But the joke about the closet lives on and it always ended with Fibber’s comment: I’ve gotta clean out that closet one of these days. My freezer, therefore, is my Fibber McGee’s closet!

The last few days I’ve been more than a bit under the weather. But I’d defrosted this roast before I got my cough/cold thing I have, so on day 3 of my cold I dug out my Fagor Duo Stainless-Steel 6-Quart Pressure Cooker and fired it up. Referring to a recipe in one of my 3 pressure cooker cookbooks, I settled on an Italian style roast because I knew my DH would enjoy having just a little bit of pasta on the side. We don’t eat much pasta because Dave’s a diabetic, but once in awhile we celebrate and always savor every bite!

The pot roast took about 20 minutes of prep (browning the meat, cutting up all the veggies and cooking them briefly), and about 1 1/4 hours to cook it all under pressure. Then I removed the meat and tented it with foil while I prepared the sauce. All of the stuff left in the pan, the veggies (except the fat I was able to spoon off the top) went into my food processor and I whizzed it up to a smooth puree. I tasted it for seasonings, then poured it out over the sliced beef and the pasta. With a green salad, that was a complete dinner.

Bottom line: it was good. Certainly not as good as my tried-and-true French Pot Roast a la Mode that I’ve used for years. That takes innumerable hours to make and bake. But since I was in sort of a hurry, it was very good. My DH loved it – really loved it. And it was on the table in about 2 hours.

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A year ago: Stacked Chicken Enchiladas
Two years ago: A list of travel websites
Three years ago: Chocolate Scones (fantastic!)

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What you are seeing in this picture: scallops nestled in the middle, drizzled with a blood orange juice and sugar caramel reduction, both blood orange segments and regular Navel orange segments in a fruit relish on top with some shredded Brussels sprouts in the background. Over on the right is the potato and celery root mash with some of the blood orange sauce drizzled on top.

Rarely do I cook scallops. We eat them out, certainly, but for whatever reason, I rarely make them myself. From what I read, you can hardly buy fresh scallops anymore – they’re all “previously frozen.” Day boat scallops are rare (you know what that means? the scallops were brought in that day from the local fishing boats). These weren’t day boats. I’d had my DH buy six of the premium ones (read: expensive – $18 for six) from a local upscale market, then I promptly came down with a cold and cough that’s kept me down. I knew these scallops needed to be eaten, though, so with my DH’s help, we made dinner.

My only caution about this meal: it takes time to make. Reading the recipe in this month’s issue (February 2011) of Bon Appetit, I really didn’t think it would. The recipe said prep time was one hour. With two of us working on it (I enlisted my DH’s help because I knew I couldn’t get it done in an hour otherwise, what with making the potato and celery root mash too – plus, I wasn’t feeling all that great). So first I did the potatoes and celery root. Peeled and chopped up, they simmered together for about 20 minutes. I couldn’t get the mixture to go through the ricer, so I did it in the food processor, and even that wasn’t a thorough puree – there were a few chunks left in the mixture. I added some butter and a little cream, salt and pepper, and that was all. Generally you never put regular potatoes in a food processor – they turn to glue (this I also know from experience many, many years ago) – but in this case because I was using both celery root and potato, I hoped it would whiz up in a hurry and not be a glue situation. It worked.

Cutting the citrus segments (they’re called supremes) from the whole oranges was the most time consuming project. I cut this recipe in half, and I had two small blood oranges and a regular orange. I also couldn’t find any mint in our kitchen garden (found out later my DH pulled it all out recently!), and didn’t have any tarragon, either. But we did have parsley. Good Italian parsley that thrives in one spot in our garden. It was dark when I went herb hunting, so I had difficulty locating things as it was. I pulled what I thought was mint, only to find out once I got inside that it was nothing but weeds! Ha! Anyway, the supremes are combined with herbs and set aside. The gastrique (a reduction, or sauce) did take a bit of time. Sugar is melted and caramelized (for two people, this took 1 1/2 tablespoons of sugar). A caution: do make this in a regular sauté pan, not a (black) nonstick pan – you just cannot see when the sugar has turned color. Take it from someone who tried this, okay? I knew better, but I actually have just one good All Clad regular frying pan – everything else I use is nonstick, and black. And I was using the large, regular pan for the scallops.

So anyway, I made the sauce – adding sherry wine vinegar, the blood orange juice and chicken broth. It was reduced down to just a tablespoon or two by the end (for our two servings). I wish I’d had a bit more, so keep that in mind when you make it. Once the sauce was made I turned off the heat and set it aside; I warmed it again just before drizzling it on the scallops.

Prepping the Brussels sprouts was not difficult, but it was time consuming. My DH was set on that task, and it took a couple before he got into the rhythm of it. Cutting out the core of a raw, tiny Brussels sprout is not exactly easy. I think next time I might cut each sprout in half, then cut out the core and pull the leaves off from there. Would be a whole lot easier, although you wouldn’t get any whole leaves that way. I should have taken a photo of the mound of leaves before we started, but we were home chefs in the weeds (you know that term? that’s when you’re cooking in a restaurant kitchen and you’re slammed with orders and needing to cook like a mad woman).

Now for the scallops. Don’t overlook the little muscle flap on each scallop – remove it and throw it out. It’s painful, I know, especially if you paid a premium price for those scallops! But throw that little muscle away. The headnotes to the scallop recipe said not to be afraid of over heating the sauté pan. That you must have a super-hot burner and pan to cook them. So I used my very large All-Clad Stainless-Steel Fry Pan (not a nonstick, because I knew I needed the extra searing heat from the untreated stainless surface), heated it on my largest (highest BTU) gas burner and got the grapeseed oil smoking hot. I also turned my overhead fan up to high long before I started. The recipe calls for olive oil, but I know that grapeseed oil has a higher flash point, so I used that gladly. The carefully paper-towel dried, then salted and peppered scallops went into the hot oil and sautéed like crazy for about 2 minutes. I turned them over and did the same on the other side, and they were done. If the cooking took 4 minutes, I’d be surprised. Probably closer to 3 or 3 1/2 minutes. I tenderly pressed my spatula on each scallop to test the firmness. I could tell when they were done, but not overly done.

Meanwhile I’d plated the other food – the Brussels sprouts were merely flash fried in grapeseed oil before I started the scallops and they were pushed out onto plates (ideally, heat the plates first so the veggies will hold their heat once plated). The scallops went out, the reheated drizzle went over the scallops, then the citrus relish went on top. We sat down immediately while the red hot frying pan was still sizzling on the back burner. Do eat this while it’s hot. I hated even taking time for the photographs!

The bottom line: just delicious. Dave even mentioned it to me the next morning what a fabulous dinner he thought it was. The combo of the celery root/potato mash with the scallops was also great. It makes a very attractive plate too. I might make this for guests – it’s certainly a beautiful presentation and delicious, but you must do the Brussels sprouts and the scallops at the last minute, so know that when you start. The celery root/potato mash can be made ahead. The gastrique can be made ahead too. Just get everything mis en place (everything you need set on trays all prepped and ready to go an hour or two before you start). We have leftover Brussels sprouts and ample of the mash, so I’ll have to prepare something to go with them.

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A year ago: Almond Buttermilk Cake
Three years ago: Mashed Potatoes with Mascarpone

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See all those shallots? And all the bacon. And the tender filet mignon underneath? And the gravy flooding the plate. Oh my goodness. Is this ever delish! Over the top. I wanted to lick the plate that sauce is so gosh-darned good.

Phillis Carey made this at the bacon cooking class several months ago and I just hadn’t gotten around to posting about it. The combination – bacon, shallots and port just are a match made in heaven. You combine them and put them over a tender filet, and oh yes.

This takes a whole lot of shallots. At the cooking class they buy already peeled, fresh shallots from Sysco (a wholesale food company). Shucks. We can’t buy from them. So, you and I will have to trim our own shallots. Just buy large ones, which will make the process a bit easier. They are roasted for half an hour. Then you reduce (boil down) a mixture of beef broth and port. Phillis talked to us at length in the class about the tawny port needed in this recipe. You can buy domestically bottled port (mostly from here in California), but it’s premium stuff, with a steep price tag. Phillis suggested Trader Joe’s Portuguese tawny port. (Real port is all made in Portugal.) She thought it was about $8 a bottle. You do use a good amount of it, so don’t use an expensive bottle in this case. Generally I follow the adage that you don’t want to use any wine unless you’d drink it yourself, but in this case, Phillis assured us it was really just fine! Anyway, the steaks are browned in the bacon-fat laden skillet, then roasted in the oven for about 8-10 minutes (depending on thickness and your preference). You make a butter/flour roux and add that to the port gravy to thicken it a bit. Allow the steaks to sit for about 5 minutes before serving, with the sauce. Decorate with some watercress if desired.

If you really want to be decadent, serve the filets with Yukon Gold potatoes with bacon and Parmesan (also from this class). But whatever you do, DO serve this filet mignon dish for a special dinner.

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A year ago: Italian Chicken Sausage and Peppers
Two years ago: Crockpot Chicken Paprikash
Three years ago: Hot and Spicy Tofu Dip (it’s really good – you don’t know it’s tofu)

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Oh yes. Oh my. Decadent. Comforting, especially if you’re a chocolate lover like I am. A chocolate high, so to speak. About 321 calories each (not as bad as you might think). Made with Dutch process cocoa, so it’s not as full of fatted chocolate as you might think, either. The whole recipe contains a cup of chocolate chips, so not all that much per muffin. All that to justify why you need to make these.

This recipe comes from the files at King Arthur Flour. I read their blog regularly, and it was a post sometime last year. I printed it out at the time and it went into my to-try file. The particular morning when I needed to make these, it just jumped out at me. You know how that is.

Easy to make, really, as long as you have all the ingredients. There’s nothing special about these unless you don’t usually have espresso powder on hand. My daughter-in-law gave me a small jar of King Arthur’s granulated espresso powder for Christmas, so I got to use my first 3/4 teaspoon of it in this recipe. And it does call for Dutch process cocoa, as I mentioned above. I had some of Hershey’s “Special Dark,” which is a combo of Dutch and regular cocoa. But you can use one or the other, really.  Dutch process cocoa is a slightly muted flavor, that’s all.

The batter is mixed up in a bowl – you don’t use a mixer – which makes it a tad easier to put together. You mix up the dry ingredients separately, then the wet ingredients separately, and combine them, also pouring in the melted butter at the same time. I used my big cookie scoop to blob batter into the 12 muffin cups and after sprinkling the top with raw sugar, into a hot oven they went. The recipe indicated 20-25 minutes, but mine were done in 20. I’d recommend you check them no later than 20 minutes. You don’t want to over bake them. They cool for 5 minutes before you remove the muffins from the pan, cool slightly, and serve warm, if at all possible! They won’t last but a few minutes if you have hungry eaters in your house. I took them to my morning Scrabble group and we all devoured one apiece. They are rich and very satisfying. A keeper. If you have leftovers, do freeze them so they’ll be as fresh as possible when you need them a few days later. These can be served as cupcakes – I noticed that a few readers of King Arthur’s website recipe said they’d reduced the sugar a bit. They are just the best when they’re still barely warm.

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A year ago: Creamy Broccoli Cheddar Soup with Croutons
Two years ago: Curry Pasta Salad (from Namibia)

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This couldn’t be easier. Truly. Chop up some broccoli, put it on a Silpat-lined baking sheet, drizzle with some olive oil and toss it around with your hands, slice some fresh garlic, pop it in a hot oven and bake for about 20-25 minutes. Drizzle with lime zest and juice and serve. Broccoli, when roasted, takes on this delicious nutty flavor and light texture. Because the oven heat draws out a lot of the moisture in the broccoli, it’s light and almost fluffy. A minor warning, though – be sure you take it out when it’s done. If it goes much further in the oven, you’ll have burned crumbles. Not even edible that way!

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