Weeknight Cooking: California Salad

With more limited time to cook these days and an upcoming trip to San Francisco on the horizon, the mind has a tendency to wander sometimes quickly over the pictures of recipes to prepare and turns them Californian.  To midwesterner, California cuisine is nearly as otherworldly to the imagination as considering French.  Like Mediterranean, Californian has evolved from regional roots; as the French style gathers in its rustic towns agriculture from the likes of the Pyrenees, and cheese from its lowland pastures, San Francisco seeks out its local sustenance from the native agriculture up the bay at Point Reyes, and counts on those cows to produce world class dairy.  The parallels continue on, seafood from a cool shore, sunshine from a generous sun, and as many invested chefs as there are restaurants.  We would like to visit Tyler Florences Wayfare Tavern and see how his powerful style

translates from cookbook genius to the real thing.  We could see a salad like the Smoky Sea Scallops with Avocado-corn Salsa showing up on the menu – a recipe I just tried last night for preparation – a great admixture of things that could become Californian with a few adjustments.  The picture in the cookbook shows blackened scallop, avocado, corn and tomato.  The combination looks good, so why not take inspiration from the components and put the salad together in a way that might be successful?  Although my preparation was simplified, if I were to Californianize I would take fresh shrimp, rub them with a Mediterranean concoction of spices, sprinkle with lime juice, and stick them

over a running flame on a beach fire as the seagulls squawked in jealousy above.  I take several handpicked cobs of corn from  the Point Reyes Pierce Farm, open the shucks, lace them Cowgirl Creamery Mt. Tam, same spices, maybe a touch of paprika, and let them blacken over the same fire

then cut down their sides leaving the kernel dice hot over the plate.  Now the sand plovers are squawking in unison as they comb the beach and the tide is slowly rising up over the lip of the berm of the sand.  Avocado, hand picked from Morro Bay Avocados, diced and also slightly dripped with lime juice, spread out over the plate for texture and substance.  Many other ingredients could be added over the top at this point, to further Californiafy, (garlic, some heat with peppers, cilantro) but I would choose a homemade batch of buttermilk dressing from the Point Reyes Creamery, made of crumbled

blue cheese, sea salt, pepper, chives, sour cream, buttermilk from the local herd, a pinch of vinegar.  By the now the Pelicans have smelled the aroma and are circling with very wide beaks above awaiting our departure so that they may find their own leftover California ingredients.  It would be time at this point to douse the fire, pack the beach picnic and gently lay the utensils down into the floor of the rowboat and oar off around the still calm spit into the mouth of the Estero and glide on into Nick's Cove where time has stopped at 1930.

Weeknight Cooking:
Arroz Con Pollo

Traditionally conceived Paella (Spanish rice) dishes can be intimidating to consider for any weeknight cooking option.  Ingredients like rabbit, an option of snails, broad/fava beans and bomba rice all sound very enticing but hard to come by.  Fortunately there are many other options available; thought of broadly, the arroz con pollo recipe, for example, is really just a fine name for a chicken and rice dish

splashed with some colorful vegetables and laced with strands of saffron.  Spanish rice dishes fall into categories based on how much of the rice is intended to be soaked up, so that an 'arroz secos' is a dish that is cooked in a very shallow pan until quite dry; baked dishes are called 'arroz al horno' and maintain more of stew like quality.  Creamy rice, 'arroz en coldoso' is cooked in a deeper pan and comes out more as a sauce.  The key quality to the Arroz Con Pollo, I found, was to properly reduce the initial highly brothy texture to something closer to the Paella stew like form.  As long as the heat is a slight simmer at medium low, the broth cooks off without overcooking the chicken or drying the rice.

Based on the advice of the recipe, you can marinade chicken thighs first if you like, to add flavor in the cooking process, but I skipped the marinade and seasoned a package of boneless thighs with the only southwestern style seasoning that we had, a sort of Mexican combination that resembles somewhat the Spanish origin of these dishes.  Cook the thighs to close to done on both sides; meanwhile prepare four cups of chicken broth sprinkled with some threads of saffron for added depth.

Add to the chicken fat in the pan chopped red onion, chopped bell pepper, cook for a minute, then add four chopped plum tomatoes.  Sprinkle on some cumin, two bay leaves, two cups of chosen rice (I chose a

medley grain option for texture) until the rice soaks up the liquid in the pan; add to that the chicken broth and the mostly cooked chicken pieces, raise the heat to boil, then back down to simmer for around 20 minutes, or until most of the visible liquid in the pan has been soaked.  Add salt along the way to make sure that the broth and rice don't bring the dish down too dull.  Once you extract the bay leaves after 20 minutes, let the dish sit, what you have is not only a very visually appealing rice dish, but an entirely different and more vibrant take on the standard rice and chicken baked dishes (also usually quite good).  Other vegetables could easily be swapped out for the bell pepper, and I

considered for a moment even adding some finely diced portions of scrambled eggs, which I thought might compliment the rice nicely as it so often does in more Asian dishes.

Weeknight Cooking:
Spanish Tortilla with Chorizo

"At the age of barely three, I would rush outside whenever I heard Julie, our family hen, cackling to announce that she was about to lay.  I would gently collect the still warm new-laid egg and hurry to the kitchen with it.  My mother collected the eggs in a large bowl, which would be kept full during the summer; in winter Julie laid only one or two eggs a week – but we loved her just the same"
– Michel Roux, from Eggs



Having finally (hopefully) mastered the delicate art of the soft two egg omelette, it seems natural to move on to other forms of cooking eggs, which Roux describes in the introduction to his book on the subject, "an undervalued food, invariably overshadowed by expensive, luxury ingredients."  What I found out while cooking the Tortilla was as an important a lesson as any with eggs – it still seems that there will be those eaters who are attracted to the plain and natural taste of eggs themselves, and those who might want the added variety of seasoning and ingredients to enjoy.  The traditional French omelette, for example, is an interesting case: it calls for

eggs, butter, Gruyere cheese and fresh chives, but the extras very sparingly, so that the egg most certainly still stands out as the primary flavor source.  The Spanish Tortilla, on the other hand, is a dish that not only offers a variety of substantial extra components to an egg dish, but what it really does is invite the addition of just about anything you can think of.  The recipe calls for chorizo, a Spanish style sausage, but one could

see adding just about any kind of meat you could think of, depending on taste or what is on hand.  The recipe calls for parsley leaves, but why not spinach for the green?  I diced up zucchini into cubes...asparagus?  The other egg trick I gathered was how to cook a much larger volume of eggs than what you get used to for the 2-3 egg omelette.  Even though the Spanish Tortilla called for only 6 eggs, I used ten because I was

feeding five of us and I wanted my dish to be thicker than the picture shown.  The process in Roux's book calls for a pan fry, cooking from the bottom up, then a flip to fry the top portion.  Because my dish was 10 eggs, I decided to go ahead and watch the eggs begin to cook from the bottom up on low heat for around 8 minutes, then I decided to go ahead and bake it in the 8-inch diameter, four-inch high deep pan for the rest of the time needed.  I knew the bottom would already be close to done from the stove top heat; I would then check the top layer while in the oven for any of the standing egg liquid to firm, and then assume that it was done.  It was, and done perfectly.  The end product of my dish was somewhere around four inches high, it peeled from the non-stick pan, and cut and kept its form in pie shaped pieces for serving.  Although there was much luck with this first time approach for the tortilla, the understanding of cooking eggs still centered around the hundreds of omelettes that I have cooked and those hard lessons learned in heat control while pan cooking thin linings of eggs.  If I would have turned my stovetop dial to anything beyond my number three at low, there is no doubt that the bottom would have browned and rubberized.  Any time after that in the oven would have made this condition worse.  I kept the temperature low and watched the heat bubble up through the center and slowly firm up.  This yielded a soft textured bottom that maintained shape and egginess.  In the end, the tortilla was a wonderful pie 'mold' that held great ingredients: potatoes cubed and fried with red onion as base; polska kielbasa quartered and fried briefly with diced garlic and a dice of red pepper; a zucchini dice

added towards the end to add a crisp and moist green.  I piled all of these cooked ingredients into the deep 8-inch pan, then dumped a bowl of 10 whipped eggs over the top, flattened it out, and let it sit.  Throughout, I made sure to salt all of the ingredients, but if there was one obvious complaint to the dish, it would be that the three potatoes and 10 eggs still needed one more heavier touch of seasoning. Because I used kielbasa instead of chorizo, I lost some spice in the mix, and we all know potatoes generally need some help.  Next time I could see slipping in olives or even a small hint of anchovies

to liven the dish, but what I did learn was one more step in perfecting the art of eggs.

Weeknight Cooking:
Lemony Asparagus-Prosciutto Ravioli

Set aside the jarred alfredo and in only a few simple and fast steps make an even more delicious batch of ravioli in white sauce.

As with so many other semi-gourmet products at the grocery store right now, there are more and more refrigerated (fresh non frozen) ravioli products to choose from.  Where there used to be one main brand of frozen, now there are at least four located in most stores near the butter and cream cheese.  This recipe calls for one package of cheese-filled, but one new product in particular stood out, the chicken and cheese stuffed selection.  The recipe also calls for prosciutto, but the stuffed chicken allowed me to skip the tougher meat option.  Asparagus, cut into four inch pieces, is dropped into the boiling pot of ravioli with four

minutes left, just enough to tenderize the cut spears.  Meanwhile, in a larger skillet, sauté a shallot or two in oil, then add a cup of heavy whipping cream and 3tbsp of chicken stock in with shallots, letting simmer until some thickening at six minutes.  At this point the tender ravioli and asparagus, drained and oiled, is set in the skillet of the milky sauce, 1/4 cup of Romano cheese added to the top and folded in, left to simmer 2-3 minutes.  Just before serving, grate as much lemon peel as desired but try not to fold in.

The final product with this fairly simple recipe from the big book of weeknight cooking, is a thinly creamy, bright, and dynamic layering of vegetable and pasta textures.  The richness of the milk, shallot and cheese sauce is contrasted nicely by the asparagus and lemon zest.

The Humble Art of the Dumpling

"For a creamy or thick soup, ask yourself if the texture is right.  You are evaluating the soup as you would any other dish or preparation. Does it have balance of textures? Soups are soft, but we love crunchy (that's why we have soup crackers). Perhaps your soup would be delicious garnished with some croutons or fried tortilla." from Ruhlman's Twenty






In his section on soup, Michael Ruhlman gives us a series of straightforward advice on how to cook good and simple soup.  He reduces all of the potentially technical intricacies by suggesting that "The most important skill in making delicious soups of any kind is learning how to evaluate a soup.  Think about it. Taste it, and think some more..." Later down the line, he asks whether a soup might use a bit

of acidity? Take a spoonful of whatever type of soup and add either a drop of lemon juice or vinegar.  If that spoonful tastes better and brighter, then add a dash of the acid to the rest of the pot.  If the soup is bright and tasty, but lacks any real substance, consider beans, pasta, or meats certainly will always do.  Soup, in this way, once its base it set (water, stock), truly comes down to either what the recipe demands or what the cook sees fit.

After cooking a great recipe for chicken and dumpling soup for years now, I would like to add my assessment that is not included in Ruhlman's Twenty: consider the dumpling.  One

of the great beauties of a dumpling is that no matter how plain the dumpling is made (generally a milk, flour, and baking powder mixture), it will always soak up the soup or stew that it simmers on.  In this way, it is like the dipping biscuit that has already been dipped for you.  For the recipe that I commonly make, for example, the dumpling is added after all of the stock, vegetable and chicken components have already boiled and reduced to a simmer, then the mix above is dolloped onto the surface of the soup and, because of its consistency and make-up, it suspends on the top layer and begins to take its shape as it cooks.  In addition, my standard dumpling recipe calls for chopped dill, which adds a very complimentary, fresh

addition to the soft biscuit.  Based on the type of soup that is being cooked, one could easily substitute dill for virtually any other full bodied herb.  Tarragon, parsley, basil, rosemary all come to mind and would be quite hard to go wrong.  The dumpling takes about another 20 minutes to fully cook – so some additional cooking time is about the only downside to considering the dumpling for any given soup – but because the dumpling consists of mostly milk and flour, eating it in a rawer state isn't in any way harmful.

The humble art of the dumpling is a throwback to slow cooked comfort food.  It is one more stage in the progression of the soup maker: consider your ingredients on hand; know you will have to have a water / stock base; consider the vegetables you have on hand; think about how much more substance you want in your particular soup...would a bean, pasta, or meat do?; season to avoid a diluted flatness; check if you can brighten the base with acid; and add to this list the unlimited possibility of whether a simple dumpling could be added?  If you have 20 minutes, the answer could be yes every time.

Minestrone Revisited

The ingredients list is long but fortifying and strikingly simple.  Minestrone is one of those 'leftover' soups in which one could see substituting virtually every part for something at least close to it, and it would turn out quite well regardless.

In essence, this recipe for Minestrone (not quite as formally pure as others that I have cooked), is simple tomato and water base underneath a bunch of vegetable and protein.  Prep time, if in a rush, is really no more than half an hour if you know what you are doing. The first stations necessary are to boil the desired type of pasta for the soup.  This recipe calls for elbow macaroni, but I happened to have what is called Ditalini pasta handy, – and happen to love it as a favorite because of its small  gourmet size.  In a large pot, a chopped onion, chopped leek, sliced carrot and garlic is sautéed until soft. To that stir in one sliced zucchini, 1/4 head of sliced cabbage and pinch of rosemary if handy.

Add one can of diced tomatoes in their juice and enough water to the pot to fill over all vegetables, cover and bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer, season with plenty of salt.  Near the end of the cooking process, dump in the desired amount of pasta and one can of kidney beans, continuing to cook

for as long as it takes for those items to warm.  If tasted and a bit too dull for taste, scratch off some fresh parmesan cheese over the top, considerably salty by nature.  Toast and braunschweiger on the side if looking for sandwich. This is pure comfort food, quite easy and hard to ruin -- the perfect weeknight soup.

Wisconsin Restaurant of the Year Award

"So we sit on our hill beside a new-blown pasque, and watch the geese go by. I see our road dipping gently into the waters, and I conclude (with inner glee but exterior detachment) that the question of traffic, in or out, is for this day at least, debatable only among carp." Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac


Eleven point four miles south of the Aldo Leopold Foundation in Baraboo, from the Wisconsin River down to the Baraboo River, is the brand new Driftless Glen Distillery and Restaurant, what I would make the claim as the best new restaurant I've been in for the last year (maybe all-time) in the state. Just as the great perennial Ishnala restaurant inside the carved hollows of the Wisconsin Dells sandstone captures the essence of an area of the state, so does Driftless Glen as it stands in purposeful stationing directly on the sandy soil of the region directly on the Baraboo River.

With only seeing brief snapshots of this place, opened up last April by a native Illinois couple who had relished a dream of a distillery somewhere significant for six years, there would have been no way to predict that along the very same path as old small town farm buildings this gem would have stood, the river cascading in the background as if built to feed the thirst of the distillery.

The owners had always wanted to create a distillery of purpose, beyond the mere mass making of bourbon or whiskey. They became attracted to the language and place of Baraboo through words and experiences of Aldo Leopold, and the kind people of the city.  The city wanted the new business but also hoped for a restaurant; the owners agreed and created a venue for high end spirits and excellent food.The tower at the front of the building was – as the owner now admits with humor – an 'oops' moment: he constructed the shell of the building but then realized that it was not going to fully house the distillery apparatus so had to add-on the beautiful front tower.

The water quality is near perfect here for distilling – clean and well filtered through the sand county soil.  The fog that lifts up off of the river daily is a healthy condition for the casks.  Local farm grains are used in the creation of the rye and vodka products.  Local beers are served.  Most of the menu items infuse some form of bourbon.  The meatloaf sandwich that I ordered was one of the best pieces of meat, coated with a mushroom bourbon sauce, that I have ever had.  The panini and roasted chicken salad also close to perfect.  Two miles up the road stands the cliffs that offer the best hikes in the state at Devil's Lake.

Some restaurants are great for very small reasons – maybe they offer the best burger, or a favorite kind of seating arrangement.  Maybe it's cute looking on the outside or in.  Great service, great customers might be the draw.  But Driftless Glen is virtually all things built into not just the restaurant 'place,' but that the restaurant itself is a part of the place of the entire region.  In my mind, it deserves, with ease, restaurant of the year award in Wisconsin.

Weeknight Cooking:
Salmon with dill carrots and cabbage

The salmon of the year award goes out to that one special salmon recipe that seemed to transcend all the rest of the many attempts throughout the year.  This year's has as much to do with the compliment sides as the salmon itself.  Either way, there is no better fish to cook – salmon is fairly easy to make  perfectly because of its tough strap of skin which tends to protect from any overheating of the meat itself. The inherent taste that salmon holds is as good as it gets.  This recipe calls for four 6 oz skin-on

salmon fillets – to be cooked either by pan method or, as I did this time, oven cook at 425 for somewhere around 20 minutes – but the side portion is what makes this meal.  I cut my salmon in
fairly thin fillets this time around and topped them with thinly cut portobella mushrooms because I had them on hand and wanted to see if seasoned mushrooms would compliment salmon or not. They did very nicely.  As the salmon is cooking, brew up a large pot of boiling water and add 4 sliced

carrots and 6 cups of thinly sliced cabbage. Cook until tender, drain, add butter, salt and some fresh chopped dill.  Meanwhile, for the dipping sauce, stir together 1/4 cup sour cream, 1 tbsp. of whole grain mustard and a pinch of red wine vinegar if desired.  The salmon, covered by light seasoning –

in this case diced mushrooms as well – dipped into the sour cream sauce then scooped along with cabbage salad is a near perfect compliment of textures and seasoning.

Weeknight Cooking:
Ricotta, Ham and Scallion Tart

So easy, so fast, and potentially so diverse in ingredients, the simple tart is a nice find for the expanding recipe box.  In essence, a tart recipe includes a crust and a filling of egg, cheese and cream.

For any one ingredient that this particular recipe calls for, I could easily see swapping it for something that suits the cook's taste (scallions, for example, could become asparagus without an ounce of trouble). This one calls for a fluted 9-inch tart pan, greased, to be lined with a refrigerated tube of pizza crust.  The pizza crust is massaged into the creases of the pan and rolled up over the ends as high as wanted, but remembering that the exposed crust above the pan will darken the quickest (I eventually placed aluminum foil over the edges so not to blacken).  Whisk 1/4 cup ricotta cheese, 1/4 cup heavy cream and an egg together; mince at least two scallions (optional, other stalk greens); add ricotta mix along

with parsley and a pinch of dill.  Meanwhile prepare diced ham however convenient.  I like to leave ham thickly diced and brown it well, sometimes with a touch of brown sugar, or even a splash of orange for zest.  Add the ham to the ricotta cheese mixture, lay into the prepared pizza crust pan and

set into 425 oven for 20 minutes, depending, again, on the color of the crust.  What really steals the show in this recipe are two things: the pizza crust in a pan becomes very fluffy and reminds you of the same sort of texture as deep dish pizza.  The other is the good ham suspended in all that ricotta cheese.  If thought of as something like pizza, then, this tart recipe could easily seen as a sausage tart, or pepperoni tart...or maybe no meat at all, but instead seasoned eggplant, zucchini, whatever. As long as there is the crust, the cheese, the egg, the cream, all should be well after 20 minutes.

Weeknight Cooking:
Hoppin' John with Andouille

"Eat poor that day, eat rich the rest of the year.
Rice for riches and peas for peace."
– Southern saying on eating a dish of Hoppin' John
on New Year's Day






How Hoppin' John, a Carolina low country dish with Carribbean / African roots, found its way on the pages of the "Weeknight Cooking" section of Food Network's magazine might not be as unusual as it first looks.  Beans, rice, and super food greens are trending upward on the American culinary scene at

a fast rate.  Beans, legumes, rice and greens add complex nutrients to our diets while also providing in some cases fairly substantial proteins.  What used to be eaten as a festive southern dish thought to be bring good luck for the coming year, now offers the eater a dish of great variety, health and substance.  At the base of the dish is a combination of black eyed peas, a 10-oz bag of frozen okra, white rice and celery; at the top of the plate is the sausage (I chose Polish as a family-friendly option, but recipe calls for the more spicy Andouille), cut into 1/4

inch thick pieces (I cut the slices into quarters, which spread the sausage out nicely), and two plum tomatoes, seeded and chopped.  To begin, the sausage and okra is cooked together in a pan, just long enough so that browned but remembering that when okra is cooked too long it becomes gooey as it

contains soluble fiber.  Set aside, then cook a diced yellow pepper, scallions and three stalks of celery in skillet.  Add three minced garlic cloves, a pinch of thyme, salt then 1 cup white rice to coat.  Stir in black-eyed peas and two cups of water, allowing to boil then reduce for around 18 minutes.  Once you re-top this panful with the sausage and okra, even though it resembles something like a true hodgepodge of ingredients, the result is a sort of comfort food stew which is dynamically textured and 'hops' with each forkful of sausage.

Coq Au Vin

"Woe to the child who tried to pass off a substitute hen from the one Maman wanted! Inevitably, after a morning of scrambling up haystacks or crawling through the woodpile to find the hiding place, the old hen was caught and brought to her just reward."
– Monique Hooker, from Cooking with the Seasons







Monique Hooker tells us in the introduction to her wonderfully personal Cooking with Seasons that "I learned early and well that the hand of the seasonal cook is the link between the good earth and family.  The important lesson was taught to me while I was growing up on our family's farm in Brittany.  There, my mother's daily call of 'table!' was a welcome summons to meals celebrating the bounty of each season."  Each spring Monique and her siblings would be asked to track down a chosen hen, which they did, and their just reward "came the next day, as a pot of coq au vin proudly took center

stage on the dinner table."  As I tried her particular recipe (have tried at least two others), it struck me that the most obvious thing in the world is true about this symbolically French recipe named "chicken in wine" – be sure to pick a proper red cooking wine!  Although the recipe does simply call for 4 cups of red wine, the type I chose to execute the dish with, Cupcake Red Velvet,  did not work as intended.

The rest of the ingredients were quite beautiful and the chicken itself turned out tender and complex to taste.  It calls for 4 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed, 1 leek trimmed and coarsely chopped, 1/2 pound mushrooms quartered, diced onion, and one half an onion studded with 4 cloves. Place a 3-lb chicken (in 8 pieces) in a pan with these ingredients, leaf and thyme, the bottle of wine and let sit in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours or overnight.  Some of the next steps will be to pull out the chicken from marinade, pat dry, brown the chicken on both sides, and eventually add some flour back into the pot with all the ingredients for thickening and stir in the wine marinade plus enough chicken stock to cover the chicken and simmer for at least an hour.  This process, as chef Hooker so wonderfully conveys, reveals an earthy kitchen aroma virtually unrivaled.  However, and this is a big however....choose the correct red wine!  Elizabeth David, the virtuoso French culinary writer, recommends in her own recipe for Coq Au Vin French Provincial Cooking, a Burgundy or Beaujolais red.  I used what I thought might be appropriate but the Cupcake, it turned out, was far too purple, of all things.  A combination of Zinfandel, Merlot, and Petite Sirah, the Red Velvet, although a considerably adorable red to sip, was not a well chosen cooking wine, which I should have known.  The chicken, yanked out of the pot of more than pleasant French

vegetable, was visibly purple to the skin – it had similarly bizarre features as we see pictures of a human heart!  We peeled the skin away and, not necessarily to our surprise, the interior of the chicken was the kind of tender that cooks dream of, juicy, not in the least over done, moist and yes, tasting of leek, clove, a pinch of bay, etc.  Would I love to make this recipe again with a different red?  Yes.  And I will, yet I will remember that it is the heat and the marinade that makes a chicken, not its color.