Amuse Bouche, Hors d'oeuvre, Appetizers, Small Bites - Creative Cooking Crew Challenge.

I make hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of appetizers a year. I am always trying to come up with new ones that are both efficient to make, eye catching and above all delicious. 

My newest one is this - a mini scallion pancake with smoked duck, caviar limes and basil seeds with a drop of hoisin. Simple, complex flavors and visually striking - this is the first time I have made these so I will tweak them a bit more before I am completely happy. Below you will see the myriad of appetizers I can make for you - if you want a recipe or a process for any individual one you see leave me a message in the comments and I will certainly oblige you.

Potato Cup with Tuna Tartare

Fig and Goat Cheese Tart

Smoked Duck Quesadillas

Sesame Crab Salad in a Tart Cup

Polenta Bites with Wild Mushroom and Sundried Tomato

Mini Beggars Purse with Pea Pesto (Gluten Free)

Assortment of Mini Savory Tartlets

Quesadilla with Green Apple

Herbed Cream Cheese and Fig Tart

Cucumber Bites with Tuna Salad

Butternut Squash Soup with Sage Cream and Huckleberry Coulis

Caprese Spoon - Grape Tomatoes, Mozzarella and Olive Oil Powder

Beets with Smoked Salmon and Scallions on Endive Leaves

Sweet Goat Cheese and Figs 

 

Herbed Goat Cheese and Figs

Potato Crisp with Smoked Salmon and Creme Fraiche

Mini Crab Cakes with Remolaude 

Zucchini Involtini

Latkas with Smoked Salmon and Creme Fraiche

Grilled Peach Tart with Manchego and Pine Nuts

Spring Pea Soup with Carrot Puree

Potato Samosas

Grilled Plums with Pistachio and Manchego Tart

Mini Lobster Rolls

Chicken Satay with Spicy Mango Salsa

Mini Burgers

Spring Rolls

Zucchini Involtini

Figs with Herbed Goat Cheese and Mint

Grilled Yam and Plantain with Creme Fraiche and Maguey Sweet Sap

Watermelon, Cucumber and Feta

Watermelon, Cucumber and Feta

Coconut Shrimp with a Pineapple Mayonnaise 

One Simple Shucked Oyster with Mignonette

Poached Pears for Creative Cooking Crew Cooking with Spirits

Definitely poached pears are one top drawer dessert, and without a doubt it is one of the easiest desserts you could ever make. Poached pears with a red wine caramel and creme anglaise only takes time to make it nice. You will read a lot of recipes that will tell you to poach the pears for about 15 minutes or so but to really get them tender and tasty I suggest no less than 45 minutes at a nice steady simmer.

So how do you make these? Easy. Get some bosc pears and peel them and cut the bottom so they standup. Fill up a nice flat bottomed pot with red wine and about a 1/4 ratio of water to wine to cover the pears - so for example: one bottle of wine and a 1/4 bottle of water. Season the liquid with orange peel, lemon peel, cinnamon, star anise, clove, a bay leaf and some sugar - you need to taste the liquid to make sure it is tasty but dont go crazy tasting this delicious elixer or you wont have anything to poach the pears in. Simmer pears in this liquid for 45 minutes then let them cool in the poaching liquid over night.

The next day gently remove the pears and reduce the liquid until it is a nice thick caramel and let the pears come up to room temperature.

This is a pear in the unreduced liquid.

Make a creme anglaise, which is a nice vanilla sauce made with milk, cream, egg yolks and vanilla bean.   Put some of the wine caramel on a plate, put some creme anglaise on a plate and put a pear on top of the sauces and garnish with a mint leaf and you are good to go.

Invite 35 of your best friends over to enjoy the fruits of your labor. Poached pears will be on your menus - I guarantee it! Dont forget to check out what the others are doing!

Frei Brothers Reserve. “Places Worth Preserving” - Campos Garden

I was so flattered and excited to be asked to participate in Kitchen PLAY's partnership with Frei Brothers Reserve that will showcase recipes and photos in support of the Frei Brothers Reserve current Facebook photo contest. We all have favorite places and we all have favorite places that need to be saved, whether thats a park, a forest or in my case a community garden.

Campos Community Garden has been a little oasis in a land of bricks and concrete here in New York City for a lot of people in my neighborhood. We garden, socialize and teach in this little plot of land. Gardens like these can take two routes: 1) they can get grandfathered in and be recognized as part of the Parks Department or 2) they can be bought and developed and turned into a rent generator. Campos Community Garden, luckily, has been recognized as part of the Parks Department but even that status can change with each and every new mayor.

It is a little late in the growing season to actually enjoy the bounty that the garden offers but I was able to pull some radish and some carrots and some mint to use as garnish on my aged prime rib dinner.

Aged Prime Rib Dinner with Red Bliss Smashed Potatoes 

Wine and Mushroom Sauce and Mint Peas -

Paired with Frei Brothers Reserve Merlot

Per person:

12 ounce aged steak (I aged mine on a rack in the back part of my fridge for two days)

2 small red bliss potatoes boiled

1/3 cup sour cream

2 TBS butter

1/2 cup peas with shredded mint

shaved carrots and radish for ganish

Salt and Pepper to taste

Sauce

3 large button mushrooms diced

3 TBS corn starch

2 TBS butter

1/2 cup red wine (I used some of the Frei Brothers Merlot)

Method

Heat your grill or grill pan to about 600 degrees.    Sauté mushrooms in butter until soft, add corn starch and wine and whisk until silky. Warm your peas then toss with mint. Smash 2 potatoes per person adding butter and sour cream and salt and pepper to taste. Grill your steak for two to three minutes per side or until its at your preferred doneness - let rest.

Place your potatoes on your plate, spoon over the peas then place your perfectly grilled steak on top of the peas and potatoes spooning over your velvety wine and mushroom sauce and top with your shredded radish and carrots. Enjoy with Frei Brothers Merlot.

You will find the subtle vanilla and chocolate notes of this wine complement the mint and mushrooms and enhance the delicate aged beef giving each and every bite a full bouquet of flavor with an incredibly soft mouth feel. Frei Brothers Reserve is committed to crafting award winning wines through sustainable practices. Get involved and submit your photo of a place worth preserving at Frei Brothers Reserve current Facebook photo contest, a new winner every month and a grand prize trip to Frei Ranch and Yosemite National Park.

This post is sponsored by Frei Brothers Reserve in partnership with Kitchen PLAY - all opinions are my own.

Savory Porchetta Sandwiches – An Italian Tradition

If you want to score big, you need to think big. Whenever you have a whole team to feed, or maybe even the league, you need to get things ready in advance.  In this case, that means overnight. This big porchetta will feed your whole squad. And if one is not enough, make two.

So, what is a porchetta? It is a moist boneless pork roast that is an Italian culinary tradition. It combines a pork belly and pork loin. It’s rolled together, seared and then roasted.

This post was originally posted here July 26, 2013 - follow the link to get the full recipe.

In a Pickle - CCC - Creative Cooking Crew made the challenge "pickle"

Green eyed green horned flying purple pickle eater - is that how the song goes? Well if it doesnt I made some purple pickles for nothing. This is an easy recipe that you can make in less than 24 hours.

Boil some beets until soft.

Boil some eggs until they are at your desired state of semi-hard boiled.

Put eggs in a glass or a jar or a bowl and add sliced garlic, rosemary, hot green chile and then cover halfway with the hot boiling liquid from the beets and then cover completely with white vinegar, add a slice or two of fresh beet to kick up the color and set aside 6 hours or over night.

You dont want to leave the eggs in the pickling agent for too long or they will become like bouncing rubber balls, so this is something that you can add eggs too often and eat often.

There are probably a few bars around New York City that still have a big jar of these pickled eggs behind the bar for the hungry beer drinker that wants a little pickled nutrition while he pickles himself but I dont thing there are any that offer purple pickled eggs. I made these once (not pickled but colored with beet juice) and turned them into deviled eggs for a breast cancer awareness event. Check out the others and lets see what got pickled.