Awake at the Whisk

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Roasted Garlic Egg Salad: Revising a Classic

When it comes to egg salad, most people don’t want you messing with their momma’s recipe. If Mom made hers with pickle relish, then by golly, all good egg salad needs pickle relish. But if Mom’s recipe came without pickle relish, you might possibly start a household World War III by adding the stuff. There are certain classics that the home cook just doesn’t redesign.

Well, welcome to World War III! I have done the unthinkable. I’ve taken a classic recipe and utterly rearranged it. I have invented Roasted Garlic Egg Salad. And by jiminy, this stuff stands toe-to-toe with the classic version, if I do say so myself. Even my husband gobbled it up happily and without an utterance of “This isn’t how Mom used to make it.”

I hope you’ll agree that this little sandwich is delightful. In fact, now you can freely introduce egg salad to your “company’s coming” menu. By adding roasted garlic and “fancy” brown mustard, you’ve just elevated egg salad from brown bag lunch to Sunday brunch. Roll out the red carpet!

Roasted Garlic Egg Salad
4 organic hard-boiled eggs, peeled and rinsed
4 cloves roasted garlic (recipe follows)
1 ½ to 2 Tablespoons organic mayo (more or less, depending on how moist you like your egg salad)
1 teaspoon grainy brown mustard such as Boetje’s Stone Ground Mustard
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
4 slices corn rye bread

Farmers’ Market Fare: eggs, garlic, (mayo if you use farm eggs and local olive oil to make your own), rye bread
Non-local ingredients from grocery store: mustard, black pepper

Mash the hard-boiled eggs with a fork. Add the roasted garlic cloves, mayo, mustard, and black pepper. Stir to combine. Divide the egg salad evenly between the four slices of bread and serve as an open-faced sandwich.

Serves 4.

Roasted Garlic
1 Whole bulb garlic
1 teaspoon olive oil
A dash each of salt & pepper

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Cut the upper inch off the bulb of garlic so that the whites of the cloves are just beginning to show. Tear off two square sheets of aluminum foil and place them one on top of the other. Set the garlic bulb in the middle of the foil, then drizzle with the olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Pull the foil tight around the garlic and place in the middle oven rack for 45 minutes to an hour. You will know the garlic is fully roasted when the cloves turn a caramelized golden brown color. When the garlic has cooled, you can now individually pull off cloves of yummy roasted garlic for your egg salad. You can also use this heavenly invention on pizzas, in pasta sauce, with potatoes, and just about anything that you want to taste better.

Labels: Boetje's mustard, egg salad recipe, farmers' market recipe, local recipe, revising a classic, roasted garlic, Roasted Garlic Egg Salad, roasted garlic recipe, Sacramento local recipe

# posted by Amber @ Tuesday, March 30, 2010 0 Comments

Monday, August 11, 2008

Anchovy Pasta

I’m not an anchovy girl, but my husband’s parents are from the East Coast, so he grew up eating the salty fish. He likes it on pizza, on sandwiches, as a snack—just about any way he can get it. Lately, I’ve seen several recipes for anchovy pasta and decided to attempt my own, using the bounty of vegetables fresh from my garden. It turned out quite delicious—my husband gobbled up all remaining leftovers, which he ate cold, like a pasta salad. It turned out to be a very versatile dish. If you don’t like anchovies, reduce the amount in the recipe to just a few as a base flavor. The fishy taste should cook out if you only use 2-3. This recipe, however, was made for big fans. The anchovy is very prominent, even though I used the softer-flavored white anchovies (they almost have a herring taste, though not quite as sweet). If you’re using regular anchovies, you’ll definitely want to cut back on the amount used or your dish will be overly salty.

Ingredients:
1 each green, yellow, and red bell pepper, cut into large chunks
1 zucchini, cut into chunks
1 large, red onion cut into thick strips
1 eggplant, cut into chunks
1 bulb of garlic, minced
1 or 2 hot chili peppers, finely diced
15 white anchovy fillets, divided
¼-cup white wine
1-1 lb. package cooked pasta
1/3-cup plus 2 Tblsp. olive oil, divided
½-cup pasta water reserved from cooked pasta
1 or 2 sprigs fennel, cut with a scissors into ¼-inch bits
Salt & pepper to taste

Heat a very large sauté pan over medium-high heat. When it’s hot, add 1 Tblsp. olive oil and sauté the veggies until tender crisp and the eggplant is cooked all the way through. Remove them from the pan and set them aside.

Add another 1 Tblsp. olive oil to the hot pan, and then add the garlic, chili peppers, and 5 anchovy slices. Allow the garlic to soften. The anchovies should fall apart as you stir. Add the white wine and cook for another 3 minutes.

Meanwhile, cut the remaining anchovies into smaller chunks. Add the cooked pasta, olive oil, pasta water, anchovies, fennel, and salt and pepper. Return the veggies to the pan. Stir it all together and serve.

Tip: If you have any remaining anchovies in the jar, you can lay 2-3 full fillets on top of each serving of pasta.

Labels: anchovy, bell pepper, eggplant, garden, olive oil, pasta, pasta salad, roasted garlic, vegetables, white wine, zucchini

# posted by Amber @ Monday, August 11, 2008

Friday, August 1, 2008

Garden Pizza

This pizza was created by my garden. I walked out, checked the plants, picked what was ripe, and started to cook. It’s inspiring to let the garden-fresh ingredients lead the way. As I follow, I am always delighted with the results. This recipe is rustic. I don’t really measure ingredients when I’m making pizza—I just throw together whatever looks good. It’s pizza. You know what you like. Just go for it until it feels right!

Ingredients:
One eggplant, sliced about ½” thick
One zucchini, sliced about 1/2” thick
Salt & pepper to taste
One whole wheat pizza dough (I get mine at Trader Joe’s), cut in half
Ranch salad dressing, fat free
Fennel sprigs
One whole bulb roasted garlic (at least—you might want two)
¼ cup sun dried tomatoes, diced
Parmesan cheese (just enough to cover the pizza sparsely—this will allow it to get nice and bubbly like real Italian pizzas)
1 tablespoon blue cheese crumbles (too much, and it overpowers your pizza)
Red pepper flakes to taste
Peperoncini peppers, diced
Basil, roughly torn or cut in julienne

Preheat oven to 500 degrees.

Lay the eggplant and zucchini in a single layer on a lightly greased baking sheet. Sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper. Roast in the oven for about 5 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool.

Roll out the pizza dough for one pizza crust. (I like my pizza thin and crispy, so one package of dough will yield two crusts for me.) Place it on a lightly greased baking pan (I use the metal kind with holes in the bottom that allow the heat to really crisp the bottom and top). Bake in the oven for about 6-8 minutes, or until crisp and beginning to brown. Remove from oven.

Spread enough Ranch dressing on the crust to lightly cover the surface. Cut the sprigs of fennel onto the dressing. Next, dot the entire surface with the roasted garlic and the sun dried tomatoes. Sprinkle the parmesan cheese over this, followed by the blue cheese. Arrange the roasted eggplant and zucchini on top of the cheese. Finally, sprinkle red pepper flakes over the entire pie. Place it in the oven for 8 minutes, or until the cheese is bubbly and golden.

Allow the pizza to cool for at least 10 minutes. Add the peperoncini peppers and top with the basil. Serve and enjoy!

(Apologies for the yellowish tint to my photo. Dang those flourescent lightbulbs!)

Labels: basil, blue cheese, eggplant, fennel, garden, peperoncini, pizza, roasted garlic, sun dried tomatoes, veggies, zucchini

# posted by Amber @ Friday, August 01, 2008 0 Comments

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