Stone Fruit Salsa

Back in the early 90s, KPBS aired a Saturday cooking show called Cooking at the Academy, referring to the California Cooking Academy. I guess I really enjoyed the show because I bought the cookbook, which I still have. This was one of those books many of us have that have a single recipe we fall in love with and work into our repertoire. Mine was a simple tomato relish made with a couple of juicy tomatoes, garlic, a jalapeño pepper, basil leaves sliced into a chiffonade, and balsamic vinegar. To that I came up with adding diced red onion.

Anyway, I discovered I adored it as an accompaniment to another favorite recipe from yet another cookbook, an eggplant souffle from the wonderful ancient tome, The Vegetarian Epicure. I still make both, although not always paired.

Fast forward decades and I found myself a couple of weeks ago at Specialty Produce marveling at the new delivery of stone fruit from the Santa Monica Farmers Market. I ended up writing a piece on four types of cherries for my Local Bounty post for San Diego Magazine, but I also had picked up some lovely peaches, plus I had a couple of plums already at home. What to do with this bounty?

And my mind somehow went to that tomato relish. So, how about a savory stone fruit salsa loosely modeled on that relish?

I had a serrano chile, basil growing in my garden, a lime and white balsamic vinegar from Temecula Olive Oil Company, which I thought would work better with fruit. Plus, a slew of cherries and other stone fruit.

But, how would this be used? Well, that was easy. All those flavors could go sort of AC/DC, complementing fish or carnitas tacos, grilled salmon, black cod, pork tenderloin, duck, or--what I had the first night--grilled flank steak. Or it could be served as a savory component in a dessert, over a rich vanilla ice cream, lemon cake, or even a decadent chocolate brownie.

Or a souffle.

Stone Fruit Salsa
(printable recipe)

Makes about 1 1/2 cups

2 dozen cherries, pitted
2 plums
1 large, firm peach
1/2 serrano or whole jalapeño pepper
1/4 medium red onion, diced
1 1/2 tablespoon white balsamic vinegar
juice of 1 lime
pinch of salt
freshly ground pepper to taste

Chop the fruit and the pepper (removing the seeds if you want to reduce the heat intensity). Add to a bowl with the rest of the ingredients. Mix well and refrigerate for an hour. Adjust the seasonings. If you want it sweeter, add a little honey to taste.

If you don't have a cherry pitter, find one. It might also be labeled an olive pitter. It's wonderfully handy.

Stone fruit salsa

Print Page

Caprese Beef Bacon and Heirloom Tomato Salad

Thank you, Mexico, for always sharing the remnants of your humid summer storms with those of us who live in San Diego. We're just recovering from a bout of hot and humid days that were the gift of a tropical storm south of us and I don't know anyone who's in the mood to do any major cooking. Me included.

So, when I took a look Saturday afternoon at my accumulated farmers market purchases to figure out what to make for dinner I was overjoyed to realize that I had a summer feast in front of me that required only a little bit of heat. On Friday evening I'd been to the Mission Hills farmers market, where I picked up a package of Brandt Beef's beef bacon, and Saturday morning I acquired an enormous and beautiful heirloom tomato picked hours earlier at Chino Farms, along with an unusual elongated green and yellow pepper.

I coveted this tomato while chatting with the Chinos--and it was still there when I was ready to buy.

Plus, I had some mozzarella (sorry, not from a farmers market, but Henry's), a red onion from Schaner Farms, basil from my garden, and, in my pantry, lovely Temecula Valley Blend olive oil from Temecula Olive Oil Company. Oh, and smoked salt from Salt Farm.

In short, a bonanza for a hot Saturday night at home with the dogs. Only one thing to do: make my version of a Caprese salad for dinner.

Look at how beautiful this is--inside and out.

Do I have a recipe for this? Nah. Just gather your ingredients, slice what needs slicing, cook what needs cooking, then layer one on top of another and sprinkle some salt and pepper over the pile. Drizzle the salad with olive oil and vinegar (my vinegar of choice was a strong Sherry vinegar from Spain that I picked up at Pata Negra), and dig in. You'll get a mix of flavors--acid from the tomato and vinegar, savory smokiness from the bacon and salt, sweet anise from the basil, more sweetness from the red onion, heat from the charred pepper, and that always lovely umami from the mozzarella. And you can't beat the mixture of textures--crunch from the bacon and onions, silky softness from the cheese, gentle chew from the vegetables. It's bright and refreshing, but, of course, its success is totally dependent on the quality of the ingredients--there's no hiding anything here.

The only cooking here was crisping up the beef bacon and roasting the pepper.

So after the salad, surely I must have had dessert, right? Oh, yes. How about half of a petite Snow Leopard melon (like honeydew but prettier) and sweet-like-candy Mara des Bois strawberries from, yes, Chino Farms. These are strawberries that make you believe in the magic of summer.

Mexico, I'm not wary of those thunderheads off in the distance. Bring it on again. I'm ready.


Print Page

Gotta Beef with Beef? Try Grass-Fed

Little by little I'm making my way around to the many different grass-fed beef purveyors out there. I've tried Estancia Beef and Tall Grass Beef. Homegrown Meats and now a filet from Da-Le Ranch near Lake Elsinore. Well, not actually from Da-Le--owner Dave Heafner raises pigs, chickens and rabbits at Da-Le but has partnered with a rancher in Creston Valley near Paso Robles in Northern California who is raising Black Angus cattle. The cattle is naturally pastured and then processed when they reach about 900 pounds.

Heafner can be found on Saturday mornings at the Little Italy Farmers Market and at the Bonsall farmers market on Sunday mornings. I've tried his chicken and pork but the beef was new to me. And, it's delicious.

Because of the meat's leanness, it's important to take care in both the preparation and cooking. I marinated my filet using a rosemary, sage, garlic herb rub that I mixed with a little white truffle oil. You'll notice the lack of salt. That's important because salt will leach out the moisture and you don't want that. To make sure the filet would cook evenly, once I added the rub and oil, I put a little plastic wrap on the filet and pounded it down on both sides, getting it to about an inch all around. The added advantage was that the rub was pushed into the meat.


I let the meat marinate in the refrigerator for about an hour with a plan to just grill it on the stovetop.

While it was resting, I took out a bunch of rapini and began its preparation. Rapini, or broccoli rabe, is a spiky leafed green that sends out little shoots reminiscent of broccoli. Because it can be bitter, it's best to blanch it quickly before sauting or using another cooking method.


I continued the white truffle oil theme, making a quick vinaigrette with white Balsamic vinegar and olive oil from Temecula Olive Oil Company, white truffle oil, salt and red pepper flakes. I sliced up a spring onion and toasted about a tablespoon of pine nuts. I put the steak on an oiled stovetop grill and let it cook about five minutes on each side. Once it was done--and with grass-fed beef, it's best to cook it only to medium rare--I plated it and covered it with foil to rest and let the juices recirculate.

Then it was time to blanch the rapini. Don't let it go more than 30 seconds or it'll just be a limp mass of green. Shock it with cold water and drain it. At that point, I sauteed it in a little olive oil with the green part of the spring onion. It took just a moment or two, then I took it off the heat and added the white rings of the onion and the pine nuts and tossed the mixture with the vinaigrette.

Voila. Dinner.


Da-Le Ranch products can be found on Saturday mornings at the Little Italy Mercato on Date St. at Kettner and Sunday mornings at the Bonsall Farmers Market at Bonsall Elementary School.

Produce courtesy of Specialty Produce.


Print Page

The Gourmet Club Strikes Oil

t'll be a gusher this week when we welcome Thom Curry, owner of the fabulous Temecula Olive Oil Company. Thom will be in studio with Robert and me (Maureen is off to some amazing location again) to talk about the art of making olive oil. Okay, and vinegars too.

If you're not familiar with Temecula Olive Oil Company you should be. Thom is certified by the International Olive Oil Council as a Master Taster and sits on the California Olive Oil Council's Taste Panel. They have about 100 acres northeast of San Diego County, where they farm their own groves sustainably, harvest the olives from October through March and hand blend the oils.


I'm a big fan of their late harvest, more mellow Mission Olive Oil and Roasted Garlic Reserve Olive Oil, but I'm eager to try the younger, stronger grassy Rotture di Oro, or "tears of gold." The oils are easy to pick up, either at their shop at Old Town's Plaza del Pasado or Old Town Temecula. Or you can order them, along with olives, soap, vinegars and more, online.

And, as long as we're talking oils, I'm bringing in some bottles of other edible oils I've been discovering. Such as Stony Brook's Butternut Squash Seed Oil.

I got a sample of the oil recently from the company, Stony Brook Cookie Company. It comes out of the Finger Lakes region in Geneva, New York, from seeds leftover from nearby Martin Farms in Brockport. They're the processing remains of the farm's squash for a ready-to-cook preparation sold to grocery stores. The seeds are roasted in Stony Brook's ovens and then cold pressed. The oil is then lightly filtered. They claim that each 375 ml bottle of oil contains the seeds of 10 butternut squash.

The oil is astoundingly flavorful -- very rich and nutty, like sipping roasted pumpkin seeds. I've used it in vinaigrettes, drizzled it on squash soup and over roasted vegetables. You can cook with it, even at high heat, but you will lose some of that gorgeous flavor. You can order it online from Stony Brook Cookie Company.

I'm also going to bring in some avocado oils. Bella Vado is a local avocado oil produced by Corrinne and Cid da Silva. The couple bought their 40-acre Valley Center avocado grove several years ago. With no dedicated machine for avocados, they do the job using an olive mill and press. Currently they have two varieties of oil, regular and lemon flavored (the lemons are pressed with the avocados to extract the oil, not infused into it).

A good avocado oil is rich and buttery tasting, like a good avocado, of course. And the most remarkable green color. I'm especially fond of the Bella Vado lemon-flavored oil, which I recently tried with a new favorite recipe, roasted Swiss chard, which I got from the wonderful Chef Jennifer Goldman Carden of Todder Cafe. Just roughly chop up the chard, toss it with a few tablespoons of the oil, along with minced garlic, salt and pepper. Spread the mixture on a baking sheet and roast it at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes. Watch it so it doesn't burn. It comes out very crispy and, with the lemon-flavored avocado oil, has a hint of citrus to it.

You can buy Bella Vado oils at both Whole Foods stores in San Diego, as well as at the Little Italy Mercato on Saturdays, At Home on Main Street in Fallbrook and The Temecula Valley Cheese Co. in Temecula. Cid just told me that at some point before Christmas, you'll also be able to order it online.

I also like the Pacifica Culinaria line of avocado oils. My favorite is the blood orange, which is delightful on salads and in preparing fish, like salmon or cod, as well as shrimp. I also like the roasted chili oil. The company is local, based in Temecula, but I believe they bring these oils in from Mexico and then infuse them with flavors. So, it's a different process than what the da Silvas and Thom Curry do. I've bought the Pacifica Culinaria oils at the Ocean Beach and La Jolla farmers markets from the Peggy's Pasta stand. And I just bought a bottle at Whole Foods.


We'll sample all these oils, which I think will end up making you pretty hungry. The Gourmet Club is the tastiest meeting in town. Join Robert Whitley and me this Wednesday morning on signonradio.com from 11 a.m. to noon Pacific. You can also podcast the show and listen at your convenience.

Print Page

San Diego Foodstuff Miscellany

I've got all sorts of interesting things to fill you in on.

• Let's talk about food equality. It's all well and good to be an ardent foodie, but in the San Diego area alone, according to Network for a Healthy California, 480,000 people face the threat of hunger daily, and that includes 181,000 children. Want to help do something about it? A coalition of the San Diego Hilton Family of Hotels has formed a coalition called Hunger at Home and on Friday, Nov. 21, the Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines will host the Hunger at Home international tasting gala. The gala will feature over 25 international cuisines. Proceeds will be donated to the San Diego Food Bank with a portion going to The Network for a Healthy California. Hunger at Home is hoping to raise half a million dollars, which would be enough to provide 1.6 million clients with 1.5 million meals, as well as nutrition education for low-income women, single parents with kids under age six and fixed-income seniors. For more information or to buy tickets, go to www.hungerathome.com.
• On a different note, if you're a fan of Saffron, as I am, you love the authentic Thai food that Su-Mei Yu offers. Next month, from Nov. 12 to 16, Saffron will be celebrating the holiday of Loy Krathong, an annual celebration of renewal in Thailand. A special menu of traditional dishes will mark the holiday, including Kanum Gean Geand Ped Gai (spicy red chicken curry with cool rice vermicelli), Kao Tom Mud (boiled rice with coconut cream, black beans and banana wrapped in banana leaves) and Rice Crispy Treats made with palm sugar and freshly harvested, glutinous rice. Saffron is loated at 3737 India St. in Middletown.
• I love a great kitchen tool and found one at the market recently that will make freezing chicken, fish and other proteins much more palatable. Sure, I'd love to go to the market everyday for that day's meals but it's just not practical. The Ziploc vacuum pump and bags are an inexpensive way to draw air out of the freezer bag, which is what contributes to the deterioration of frozen food. It's easy to use and I'm impressed by how much air gets sucked out. Below is the salmon filet I'll be able to eat next week for dinner.

• Olive harvesting is just beginning and I'm hurrying to finish my current batch of Temecula Olive Oils so I can get more oils from the new harvest. Today, I made croutons from a sourdough baguette from Bread & Cie. I sliced the baguette and tossed the slices in a bowl with Temecula Olive Oil Company's Roasted Garlic Olive Oil, minced fresh thyme and a little salt. Bake them for about seven minutes at 400 degrees. Watch them to make sure they don't burn. Mine came close!
  

• I just bought a fascinating new book called The Flavor Bible by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg. It's a compendium of ingredients and the herbs, spices, condiments and other foods that go with them. This is going to be a great resource for the times when I have something unusual that I've never cooked with and need to figure out what would work with it or to rethink and reconceive familiar ingredients to bring out new flavors.
• Finally, Rey Knight of Knight Salumi Co. told me that he's setting up shop on Clairemont-Mesa Blvd. near the 163 freeway. Not only will you be able to buy his amazing products but he's going to offer tours to show how his salumi and other products are made. He expects to be opening sometime in mid-November. Stay tuned. Currently, you can find him at the Little Italy, Hillcrest and North Park farmers markets.
  

Print Page

The Gourmet Club Takes to the Backstreet

I'm back--no pun intended. I was laid up watching the Olympics 24/7 while my back was spasming and otherwise creating misery. But that was last week. This week, I'll be rejoining Robert and Maureen at the table and meeting our guest, Cindy Pawlcyn.


Pawlcyn, owner of Cindy's Backstreet Kitchen in St. Helena, as well as Mustards Grill and Go Fish, is a Napa Valley icon. From the fresh organic ingredients she's committed to using in her restaurants to her experiential food research, Pawlcyn creates delicious, heartfelt food that has earned her a devoted local and national following. We'll be talking with her about her new cookbook Big Small Plates, her restaurants and her travels to San Sebastian, Spain and Oaxaca, Mexico to try new restaurants and cuisines for inspiration.

We'll also spend some time talking about last weekend's Taste of Slow Food San Diego, the Temecula Olive Oil Company and what sounds like the ultimate birthday dinner, enjoyed by Maureen last Saturday (think Carl Schroeder and Michele Coulon).

So, tune in for the hour. The Gourmet Club is the tastiest meeting in town. Join Robert Whitley and me this Wednesday morning on signonradio.com from 11 a.m. to noon Pacific. You can also podcast the show and listen at your convenience.

Print Page