Archive for Salad Recipes
Ceasar Salad in a Crunchy Parmesan Bowl
Posted by: | CommentsA Le Cordon Bleu Paris graduate, Hector Playuk is currently the Executive Chef for Jack’s Bar and Restaurant in Washington DC. This restaurant gets big kudos from us as it is 100% wind powered! One of their signature lunch dishes is a Caesar Salad served in a crispy parmesan bowl, and in this video Hector shows us how to make the bowl.
Note: It is absolutely essential to use a nonstick pan for this, anything else will not work (we tried!).
Recipe instructions: Make the Parmesan bowl using 7-8 ounces of cheese for each bowl. For the croutons, simply slice a baguette into cubes, coat in olive oil, garlic powder or fresh minced garlic, salt and pepper, bake at 400 degrees F for 15 minutes. In a regular bowl, toss romaine lettuce, croutons, shredded parmesan cheese and caesar dressing, then add to the parmesan bowl. Regarding the dressing, we like this recipe from Scott’s Seafood, but you can absolutely use your own variation or use a store bought creamy Caesar dressing. Enjoy!
Delizioso! Italian Salmon Carpaccio
Posted by: | CommentsItalians seem to possess an amazingly strong passion for food, much more so than the rest of the world.
There is a really great site, Italian Food Net, which serves up delicious authentic Italian recipe videos. Their chefs speak Italian in the clips, but they have done such a wonderful job with the subtitles and ingredient conversions that the recipes are simple to follow.
Some recipes are incredibly simple to make but somehow give the impression that you’ve spent hours slaving over them. This would be one of those! In the video, chef Alessandro prepares an Italian salmon carpaccio with oranges served over arugula. Head over to their site to view the written recipe, browse around a bit and pretend you’re a student in an Italian culinary school!
Tiny bites of ingredient education:
- Carpaccio is defined as an appetizer using thinly sliced raw fish or meat.
- The peppercorns used in the recipe are brined, Whole Foods should have them, you may need to look in the area where jarred pickles are.
- The recipe calls for the greens “rocket”, and rocket = arugula!
Salud Napa’s Beet Salad Recipe
Posted by: | CommentsThe family behind Ceja Vineyards has a new video blog emerging! Entitled Salud! Napa, they are just beginning their online journey, but soon will be a “bicultural cooking show” embracing world cuisine, a wine portal, and a social networking site. Already they are featuring several delicious cooking videos, and all dishes are paired with recommended wines from their vineyard. Truly enlightening, learn about their delicious success story here.
We’ve developed a recent love affair with beets, and immediately fell in love with their video featuring Chef Gerry Castro preparing an easy beet salad with a fresh herb vinaigrette. Using boiled, peeled, and sliced beets, he dresses them with oil, balsamic vinegar, chopped shallots, salt and pepper, served over parsley, chives, tarragon, and chervil. He pairs it with an elegant 2007 Ceja Napa Carneros Chardonnay.
A tiny morsel of food trivia on the herb CHERVIL, for those not familiar. It truly is an under appreciated herb in the states, however is quite the player in French cuisine. A component of “Green Goddess” dressing, this member of the parsley family has a delicate flavor with a touch of anise. It also behaves as a catalyst in bringing out the flavor of other herbs. The dried version is not of much use as it is fairly flavorless. Chervil has a very short life, and will only be useful for about 2 days in the refrigerator. Can’t find it? The closest substitute is parsley combined with tarragon, which are already in this recipe, so don’t worry!
