Cobb Salad

Spring is coming, so we thought.  All we have here in the Northeast are rain showers on the warm days and chilly winds on the sunny days.  I am no longer able to eat the yams in my cold storage – I must eat greens.  I finally went to the grocery store and for the first time in a very long time I bought lettuce.  I tried to eat a seasonal and local diet, but if you live in the Northeast like I do then at some stage you have to give up and just throw the green potatoes away.

Cobb Salad

Nothing in this salad was local, not the bacon, bleu cheese, avocado, chicken, lettuce, nor the cranberries.  It was very delicious and gave us hope that spring is on the way and soon little lettuce and arugula shoots will sprout and fill our CSA box once again.  In the meantime I have to buy my lettuce for $3.49 a head at our local rip-off Met Foods.

To make a Cobb, just arrange all the items I mentioned above over lettuce dressed with a simple vinaigrette.  It will make you feel like you are dining at a country club on a bright sunny day.

Thanksgiving – Part IV – Phew!

I’m thankful that it’s all over!  Storkbite’s Papa reminded me all day that cooking is my hobby and not his.  However, after all the preparation, the fluffing, the Stork wrangling, and the cooking it was well worth it.  We had a tremendous dinner — so tremendous in fact that we forgot to photograph the sides and desserts which were all extraordinary.

I was unable to get the traditional bird of paradise flowers that have always graced our table in the past so we instead took the last of the mums.  When I got married I had to “merge” relish tray traditions and add green olives and green onions to my already perfect Indian Trail relish, black olives and Helen’s pickles.  It just meant that the tray got bigger and was harder to pass around.

We also have a tradition in my family that the littlest one gets to use her baptism silver cup and spoon at all holiday meals.  I think that my brother and I used ours until we were at least pre-teens but that is neither her nor there.  Storkbite’s juvenile service was quite sweet and made for excellent toys half way through when she was tired of sitting pretty and eating her turkey bird.

The salad is about the only item on the menu that never changes. It is only served on Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving Grapefruit Salad

• 2 Ruby red grapefruits
• Boston lettuce
• Pomegranate seeds
• Red onion slices
• Shaved fennel
• Poppyseed vinaigrette

Simply lay two nice pieces of lettuce on a chilled plate and layer the remaining ingredients.  Add some fresh poppyseed dressing and that’s it.  It’s so beautiful, festive and oddly 1950s.

The turkey threw me for a loop yesterday.  I thought that I was very late to get it in the oven, but the darn thing cooked so fast that it had to “hold” until all the guests were properly sated on cheeses and prosecco.

I made all the traditional sides including, sweet scalloped yams, pearl onions with their darling little hats, and roasted turnips and carrots with thyme and sea salt.  Storkbite’s uncle brought over delicious collard greens with bacon and mashed potatoes.  The sage dressing from the bird was Storkbite’s favorite and the perfect potato snowflake rolls were mine.

I just wish that I liked my beautiful bird better.  The 14 lb. hen did turn out awful pretty and there is plenty of it left over for some turkey sandwiches today.

The dessert hour was probably the best part.  We had the pies and tarts that I already mentioned in addition to a blackberry pie and apple pie which are the traditional desserts from Storkbite’s other uncle’s girlfriend’s Texas table.  Did you get all that?

And after it was all over, the baby and hosts tried to get a family photo worth a hill o’ beans for our holiday card.  Unfortunately this was the best we could muster after a long hard afternoon of eating and drinking.

Lox, Buckle and Scallops

What to do with lox, buckle and scallops? See below. We had a busy week, but some of the highlights were bagel and lox salad which I made up out of desperation one night after a hard day of Storkbite wrangling. The pièce de résistance of the week was the ceviche, which I made with fresh scallops and calamari from our local fisher at the farmer’s market. In addition to the ceviche, I made a fresh blueberry buckle with the leftover ingredients from this morning’s buttermilk blueberry pancakes. It’s basically the reincarnation of breakfast for dessert.

Bagel and Lox Salad

This was another variation of breakfast for dinner. It was chopped red onion and capers added to a regular plain old vinaigrette dressing over greens. Then on top, toasted bagel pieces, smoked salmon, and crumbled hard boiled egg.

This was a very quick meal which I threw together in minutes while singing to Storkbite in her high chair. Papa ran in from work, ate his salad and promptly left for a meeting. Yep, that’s what our week was like. Good thing we splurged on scallops for our Saturday night feast.

Ceviche

OK, so this was so damn good. Storkbite’s papa told me that he felt like he was sitting on a beach in Mexico. I took that as a compliment. The best part about this is that I had all the ingredients except the scallops and cherry tomatoes which were purchased steps from our front door at the farmer’s market. I had never made ceviche before and I think I’ve only eaten it once. This was a 100% intuitive recipe that actually worked out! I used about 1 lb. of very fresh scallops, 3 calamari, a hand full of tomatoes, 1 avocado, 5 limes, 1 orange, 1 small white onion, 1/2 a small zucchini, 1 long skinny light green pepper, 1 handful of rough chopped cilantro, salt, pepper and olive oil. I just chopped everything really nicely and mixed in together in a bowl. I let all the flavors marry together in the refrigerator for the afternoon and then we took the entire bowl to the park to watch Twelfth Night. The ceviche, a loaf of semolina bread, a bottle of wine and comedic Shakespeare made for an excellent Saturday evening. Wow – I can’t get over hot summery and delicious a bowl of fresh ceviche is – YUM!

Blueberry Buckle

This dessert started when I ran out of our apartment at 8 AM in my PJs to the farmer’s market to get some blueberries. I woke up wanting buttermilk blueberry pancakes real bad. Instead of making tons of pancakes to save for the week, I dumped the remainder of my homemade batter into a baking dish, threw in a layer of fresh blueberries and topped it with the crumble (or buckle) part of this dessert. It’s simply 3 tbs. butter mixed up with 1/4 c. flour, 1/4 c. brown sugar, 2 tbs. white sugar, pinch of salt and a big fist full of almonds. Mix that up until it’s crumbly and put it all over the top. I baked this for 30 mins. at 350 and it looked nice and brown. I don’t think you can really go wrong with having blueberry buttermilk pancakes twice in one day. I don’t think Storkbite will mind.