Salads – Food Woolf

Melon Salad with Chili and Lime

Working in the restaurant industry can be a wonderful thing, especially for someone who loves to cook. Some days can be more inspiring than others, but the love of food and a constant desire to create beautiful things in the kitchen is the twine that holds the front and back of house of the restaurant together every day. Coming to work has been especially exciting and fulfilling since I began working with the talented and Michelin star rated husband and wife culinary team, Karen and Quinn Hatfield.

My work assisting the pair open their newest restaurant, The Sycamore Kitchen–a bakery/café and bakery located in the Fairfax/Miracle Mile area of Los Angeles– gives me the opportunity to work with a team of highly skilled and passionate people who express themselves beautifully through the wholesome and flavorful food they make.

The flavors of the food at The Sycamore Kitchen are approachable, wholesome, and ever so sneaky because you find yourself needing to get more and more of the stuff. You just can’t help yourself. In fact, in just a few weeks the restaurant has been open, Sycamore Kitchen has garnered a dedicated following. Not only do customers drive across town for a Salted Caramel Bobka roll, or the Double BLT sandwich with braised pork belly, they return day after day for savory and sweet favorites with determined gusto.

Even though I’m at the restaurant more than full time, I find myself craving certain dishes frequently. It’s almost haunting, these flavors. The cookies and pastries are constantly on my mind and dishes like Sycamore Kitchen’s heirloom watermelon salad with aleppo pepper and lime make me pace my apartment until I can’t take it anymore and have to go to the store to buy all the ingredients so I can recreate the dish (to the best of my ability) at home.

Why? Because these sublime flavors aren’t something I can get out of my head so easily. Just take one nibble of this spicy, salty, sweet dish and you’ll see what I mean. Continue reading “Melon Salad with Chili and Lime”

October 30October 31

Mushroom, Squash and Sweet Potato Quinoa

overhead quinoa salad — Mushroom, Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato Quinoa

I’m not used to leaving town for my job. Unless you own numerous restaurants or work in a cross-country chain, most people in my business tend to stay in one locale for a long time. Restaurants may be a high turnover business, but most professionals tend to stay at one address for as long as they possibly can. So, it’s not every day in the life of this restaurant consultant where I pack my bags and head out of town for several weeks for a restaurant gig. And yet, here I am, packing my bags and organizing my life before I join the talented team of restaurant professionals who will soon open their vibe-dining establishment in Rancho Cucamonga.

I may not have as many posts between now and the end of this month. But I promise to cook up a bunch of great stories while I’m gone and be back in time for Thanksgiving. In the meantime, I leave you with this simple and homey side dish inspired by a photo in this month’s Food and Wine. This simple version of a Fall quinoa features butternut squash, sweet potatoes and trumpet mushrooms.

This salad is great as a side dish, a main course, and–if you’re looking to turn things up a notch–even breakfast if you fry up an egg and put it on top!

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Mushrooms, Squash and Sweet Potatoes Quinoa

One large butternut squash, peeled, halved, de-seeded, and quartered
2 tablespoons of Olive Oil
4 tablespoons butter
2 large shallots, 1 1/2 sliced across; the remaining half, minced
4 thyme sprigs
3 1/2 cups water
2 cups quinoa, rinsed
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1/2 pound oyster mushrooms, cut into 1-inch chunks
1 large sweet potato, roasted
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1/2 cup chopped parsley

Roasting the squash and sweet potato. Preheat the oven to 350. Either on the cooking sheet or in a bowl, drizzle the quartered butternut squash pieces with olive oil, toss. Arrange on a baking sheet. Place the sweet potato on the same sheet tray. Roast for about 20-30 minutes and then flip the squash and roast for another 20-30 minutes. The squash should be golden and tender (not mushy). The sweet potato should be soft in the center (test with a knife through the center of it).
In a medium saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons of butter. Add the minced shallot and cook over moderate heat until softened. Add the thyme and the water, season with salt and pepper, and then bring to a boil. Add the quinoa. Cover and cook over moderately low heat until the water cooks down and becomes completely incorporated, about 15 minutes.
In a large skillet melt two tablespoons of butter and a tablespoon of olive oil. Add the sliced scallion and mushrooms. Sauté until soft and browned, about 4-6 minutes. Add the maple syrup. Taste for seasoning. Add the quinoa, squash, sweet potato, and parsley. Serve immediately.

September 4October 2

Cucumber, Watermelon, Mint and Feta Salad

Labor Day — A Sketchbook Pro painting by me

Couldn’t find the words this week. The truth couldn’t come through. There was a moment when I thought I would rather not post than create paper-thin architecture of a few words to hold up a recipe. Instead, images came. Colors, shapes, and textures spoke to me. I grabbed my iPad and started painting with my SketchBook Pro app. I followed the muses. I kept the internal editor at bay.

Sometimes this is how creativity comes. Who am I to say no?

So this week, I give you a recipe in rosy pinks, creamy greens, and clotted white. I’ll let the simple flavors of summer speak for themselves. Make this salad. It’s simple but the textures and flavors are profound.

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Cucumber, Watermelon, Mint, and Feta Salad

1 small watermelon, cubed

1 cucumber, cubed

4 branches of mint, trimmed of stems. Only leaves.

1/2 a block of feta, a little less than a cup

2 tablespoons of EVO

Sprinkle of S&P

Optional: Hot sauce

Try to keep all the cubes of the ingredients the same size. Mix the watermelon and the cucumber together and then add pieces of feta and mint. Mix. Drizzle with a little oil. This salad tastes best if all the ingredients are cold. Enjoy.

May 4January 18

A Recipe for Time

Maybe it’s my age. Perhaps technology and rapid processors are to blame. But days–like slick egg whites passing through my fingers as I separate out the yolks—disappear now, leaving me with nothing but solid month markers to score their departure. February, becomes March. April turns to May. May will soon be June.

Computers crunch information. Twitter feeds give news (and musings) the moment it happens. Google offers micro-second answers. Video chats replace old-fashioned phone calls and day trips. The library reduces hours and librarians sells old hard covers for pennies to pay the bills. Mom buys an organic frozen meal in the microwave and calls it dinner.

What’s happening to us?

I step into the kitchen and scan my shelves for answers. There’s a loaf of bread. A box of pasta. A bag of rice. The cooler holds radishes, kale, and slippery pods of fava beans. What’s for lunch? What do I have time to make?

Michael Ruhlman, a food-writing hero, recently hit the boiling point at the IACP conference after hearing one too many talking heads extol the virtues of cutting corners in the kitchen. Though I did not attend the Portland event, I was able to see the meltdown online via You Tube (see below). The panel’s talk turned to the need to make cooking easy for people and one speaker celebrated the idea that “pre-cooked” food items could get busy folk motivation to step up to the stove to cook.

Continue for more and a Simple Radish Recipe »

May 28March 14

Market Vegetables with Meyer Lemon Cream Recipe

As a food lover, working at a restaurant can be a wonderful and cruel thing. You’re surrounded by food and required never to take a bite. You may be hungry but there’s no time to eat (and the last thing the kitchen wants to do is make an employee a meal). Working in restaurants is like being stranded on the ocean in a dingy: You’re surrounded by a beautiful, beguiling thing that you can not consume.

The fact that I handle plates of beautifully crafted appetizers, sculpted entrees and arousing desserts on a nightly basis may have something to do with my obsession to recreate the chef’s dishes at home. And honestly, not eating and being surrounded by food begins to get to you. Especially when you’re so hungry you could eat your own hand.

One dish that’s saved me from nibbling off a pinky for sustenance is a market vegetable dish inspired by my new boss, Chef Suzanne Goin. Goin’s appetizer of market vegetables with Meyer Lemon cream and “burrata” is truly something to behold and a dish I’ve been pushing–I mean suggesting–to guests ever since Tavern Restaurant opened several weeks ago.

The dish is a beautiful combination of colorful blanched vegetables that have been tossed in a light citrus cream and finished with one of the world’s most decadent forms of mozzarella. It’s a celebration of all that is available at our farmers’ markets in one mouthwatering dish that is incredibly easy to prepare and, if done right, is a real scene-stealer.

Market Vegetables with Burrata and Meyer Lemon creamLet the market guide you to the ingredients for this celebration of the season’s freshest vegetables. Let freshness and diverse colors inspire your choices in vegetables! Also, don’t go too heavy on one ingredient and try to pick equal portions.

¾ lb baby carrots (small, fresh and straight from the market), washed and scrubbed
½ lb English snap peas
¼ lb pea tendrils
1 head of cauliflower, stock removed and cut into uniformed florettes
1 small head of purple cauliflower, stock removed and cut into uniformed florettes
¾ lb baby zucchini or baby squash, rinsed well
1 bunch of pencil thin asparagus, cleaned and cut into equal 2-inch pieces.
2 balls of burrata (this California- or Italian-made cream-filled mozzarella is available at specialty cheese stores or Whole Foods’ cheese counter)
Salt (kosher and Maldon) and pepper to taste
2 Meyer lemons (thinly sliced)
Meyer lemon cream (recipe below)
*optional flourishes: flowering chive or fennel fronds

Fill a large pot (preferably a pasta pot with a pasta strainer) with cold water. Add enough kosher salt to give the water a slightly salty taste. Bring water to a rolling boil.

When the water is at a full boil, prepare a large metal mixing bowl with ice water. Fill bowl with ice cubes and just enough water to cover the ice.

In separate batches—one vegetable group at a time–blanch the vegetables. Make sure not to add too many vegetables at one time in order to maintain a rolling boil. Cook the vegetables briefly—1-4 minutes depending—making sure they maintain their structure and become just tender. Feel free to test the cooking time early by sampling a vegetable for taste and texture. When the vegetable is just cooked, immediately remove them from the hot water with strainer and plunge them into ice water bath to stop the cooking process. The ice bath will set the vegetables’ bright color.

Remove vegetables with strainer from the ice water as soon as they are cool to the touch. Put the blanched vegetables on a paper towel-covered sheet tray to dry. Repeat process with all remaining vegetables.

Toss the vegetables with enough Meyer lemon cream to coat everything. Add Meyer lemon slices and toss again. Taste for seasoning. Squeeze more lemon over the salad if necessary. Tear pieces of burrata into the salad and serve immediately.

For the Meyer Lemon Cream
From Suzanne Goin’s Sunday Supper at Lucques

2 tbsp finely diced shallot
¼ cup Meyer lemon juice
½ cup plust 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
¼ cup plus 1 tbsp heavy cream
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Add the shallot, lemon juice and ¼ teaspoon of salt in a bowl and let sit for 5 minutes. Whisk in olive oil. Then, gently stir in cream, being sure to add a few grinds of pepper to taste.

April 1

April Fool In the Kitchen

Ask any of my friends and they’ll tell you I can’t lie. At least, I don’t have the skill to lie and get away with it. If there’s a practical joke being played on someone, I want to scurry over and give away the punch line before things get embarrassing.

Being an odd little kid on the playground (read: future writer) probably has a lot to do with my aversion to “little white lies“, bending the truth and practical jokes. The whole business twists up my insides and makes me feel down-to-the-core wrong. Which is why I am NOT posting an April Fool’s recipe. I’d rather contribute to keeping it real on April Fools day and avoid all the pranksters.

I offer you this beautiful, mouth pleasing butter lettuce salad that is perfect for staying indoors, eating healthy and avoiding the truth-bending fools.

This dish was inspired by a beautifully textured salad I had at David Lentz and Suzanne Goin’s Los Angeles restaurant, Hungry Cat. The mixture of market fresh ingredients and shirred eggs give this salad so much flavor and mouth-feel I’ve found myself thinking about skipping a main course and ordering another salad. Which I never do, because their entrees are way too good to ignore, but…

Turns out, making this salad at home is so easy and satisfying I really don’t need to eat anything else with it. I’ve modified this recipe for maximizing health benefits. If you don’t have a problem with cholesterol, feel free to leave the yolks in the hard boiled eggs.

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Market Lettuce Salad with Shirred Eggs
Inspired by a dish at The Hungry Cat, Los Angeles

1 head of butter leaf lettuce (red leaf lettuce can be substituted)
3 radish, thinly sliced (use a mandoline for precision. The little radish tops will protect your fingers!)
4 tbsp flax seed oil
1 lime, cut in half for juicing
2 eggs, hard-boiled with yolks removed
salt (regular and Maldon) and pepper

Put 2 eggs in a saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil and then cover, turning off the heat. Let sit for 10-15 minutes and then drain and immerse in cold water. Remove shell of egg and yolks.

Meanwhile, pull apart the leaves of the lettuce. Wash the leaves well (immerse in water or rinse under faucet for several minutes) and spin to dry. Put the lettuce and radish in a big salad bowl and season dried leaves with a sprinkling of salt and pepper. Drizzle with flax seed oil and, using hands or wooden spoons, toss gently to coat the leaves with oil. Squeeze half the lime over the lettuce. Taste a saturated leaf. Squeeze more lime juice over salad if it needs more acidity. Taste again, adjust for flavor.

Using a cheese grater, shirr the eggs (grate the egg white) onto the salad. Plate, finish with a sprinkle of Maldon sea salt and serve.

June 3November 14

Inspirational Dishes

Eating at a great restaurant is inspiring.

If you can get beyond the the daily challenges of the service industry, working at a great restaurant is galvanizing.

While working in a great restaurant: I met and fell in love with my husband. I found some of my best friends. I discovered (and tasted) wines from all over the world. I became a foodie. I learned how to make a miserable guest happy. I unraveled the mystery of cheese making. I gained an acute sense of taste and smell. I sampled a panoply of dishes and made them my own.

This spring time antipasti, is one of them.

This is one of those great restaurant dishes that once I tasted it, I needed to know how to make it. The following is my interpretation of the dish we currently serve at the restaurant.

Peas Mint and (home made) Greek Yogurt Cheese

3 tablespoons (a full palm’s worth) of Greek Yogurt Cheese
(Note: see previous post for the full recipe). To save time, goat or sheep’s milk cheese will do.
1 cup of sweet peas (in the pod), juilienned
1⁄4 cup red onion, diced
Juice of one lemon
3 tablespoons of a good red wine vinegar
1⁄4 cup Extra virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Maldon sea salt (or a good finishing salt)

*Begin preparation of Greek Yogurt cheese one day before serving with salad!

Toss the julienned peas and onion with the olive oil, lemon juice and vinegar.

Season with salt and pepper to taste. Put on plate and serve with a small round of your home made Greek Yogurt Cheese. Finish with a drizzle of olive oil and pinch of Maldon sea salt.