Eggs Mimosa with Artichoke Tapenade

So pretty! 
Have you ever heard of eggs mimosa? Neither had I until my French sweetheart introduced me to them. They’re like deviled eggs, except they’re not deviled.

Instead, you stuff hard boiled egg whites and then grate the yolks over everything, resulting in a gorgeous platter reminiscent of the puff-like brilliant yellow mimosa flowers that abound in Provence and along the Mediterranean coast.

Since most of the egg yolks are used to create the mimosa affect, we need to stuff the egg whites with something else. For this recipe we use an artichoke tapenade, made with artichoke hearts, green olives, capers, fresh herbs, and some mayonnaise to bind it all together.

I’ve also tossed some grated Parmesan into the mixture, because it just tastes good with the artichokes. You can leave it out if you want.

I’m so used to stuffed eggs with some variation of yolks and mayonnaise for the stuffing that this one took some playing with to get right. It isn’t your typical deviled egg.

It’s as if our tried-and-true version took a road trip to France and came back decked out in flowers and singing Edith Piaf. Both my Frenchman and my mother approve; I hope you do too!

Eggs Mimosa with Artichoke Tapenade Recipe

We are using canned artichoke hearts that have been packed in water. You could also use freshly cooked artichoke hearts. Just avoid the artichoke hearts that are packed in a marinade; those would overwhelm this dish.

Ingredients

• 6 eggs, hard boiled
• 3/4 cup chopped artichoke hearts (from about 1/2 14-ounce can artichokes hearts in water, drained)
• 1/2 teaspoon capers, drained
• 4 pitted green olives, chopped
• 1 teaspoon minced chives or green onion greens, packed
• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh tarragon and/or parsley, packed
• 2 Tbsp mayonnaise
• 2 Tbsp grated Parmesan cheese, packed
• 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
• Sprigs of mâche lettuce or baby spinach for garnish 

 

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Danish Pork Burgers

I met Iowa hog farmer Paul Willis at the Fancy Food Show in January and naturally our conversation turned to food and recipes. “Have you ever had a pork burger?,” Paul asked, eyes bright. Upon hearing my response in the negative, Paul added, “You have to try my wife Phyllis’ pork burgers. They’re amazing.”

Thinking of burgers made out of pork, I can’t say I was convinced, even when he continued, “Everyone in Iowa eats pork burgers.” But when Paul pointed out his wife’s recipe in the Niman Ranch Cookbook I saw the light.

These burgers aren’t hamburgers made out of ground pork. They are more like large, flattened Swedish meatballs. Very tasty. Thank you Paul and Niman Ranch, and thank you Phyllis for a fabulous recipe.

Danish Pork Burgers Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 pound ground pork
• 1 red onion, finely diced
• 16 saltine crackers, crumbled
• 1/2 cup whole milk
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• Vegetable oil for cooking
• Dijon mustard for serving

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Becca’s Jambalaya

My friend Becca’s favorite dish to make for a gathering is her shrimp and sausage jambalaya. Becca grew up in Biloxi, Mississippi where if that’s where you’re from, you learn how to make jambalaya!

A few notes about this wonderful recipe. It makes a lot. This batch easily serves 12. Now, when Becca makes it, she usually scales it by 3x, making enough for over 30 people, which means there’s always plenty to send home with folks, and plenty for leftovers.

Becca uses Tony Cachere’s seasoning in her jambalaya, which is a standard seasoning in that part of the country. You can buy it online, or look for a recipe online to approximate the herbs and spices in it.

 

Becca’s Jambalaya Recipe

The ingredients are listed in amounts appropriate for a jambalaya batch for serving 12 people. You can easily double or triple the recipe.

Ingredients

• Andouille and smoked sausage, sliced 1/4 inch thick - 2 cups
• Tony Chachere's Creole Jambalaya Dinner Mix - One 8-oz box
• Water - 2 1/4 cups
• Uncle Ben's converted original long grain rice - 1 cup
• Chicken broth (homemade is best) 2 1/4 cups
• Onion - a mix of yellow, red, and green onions (tops included), all chopped - 2 cups total
• Bell peppers - a mix of yellow, red, and green, all chopped - 2 cups total
• Celery, chopped - 1 cup
• Bay leaves - 2 (Make sure they are fresh and strong, if not, add more)
• Garlic, minced - 1 heaping Tablespoon
• Whole cooked tomatoes - 1/3 of a 32-oz can, break up the tomatoes with your fingers as they go in, reserve the tomato juice to add if necessary
• Diced tomatoes - 1/3 of a 14-oz can
• Tomato sauce - 1/3 of an 8-oz can
• Dried thyme - 1 teaspoon
• Tabasco sauce - several sprinkles
• Oregano - 1 teaspoon
• Cayenne pepper - 1/2 teaspoon
• Sugar - 1 pinch
• Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning - to taste
• Fresh Shrimp, in shell, but cut to make it easy to remove from shell - 1 1/2 to 2 lbs (Remove shells and store shrimp in ice water while shelling.)
• Lemon juice - juice of half a lemon for each lb of shrimp

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Cowboy Steak with Chimichurri Sauce

The first time I saw a “cowboy steak” at our local butcher, all I could think was, “wow, that’s one BIG steak”.

Looking like a two-inch thick steak ping-pong paddle, the cowboy cut of steak is actually a beef rib-eye, bone-in, with the bone Frenched, so that if you were the cowboy eating this steak, you could just hold it by the bone. (So cowboys don’t use forks and knives?)

I can just see Marlboro Man now, sitting by the campfire, tin coffee cup in one hand, cowboy steak in the other. (Hmm. Maybe I should ask Ree, the Pioneer Woman herself, if cowboys even eat steaks like this.)

Or maybe it’s just a marketing ploy to sell more steak.


In any case, we love cooking meat bone-in for the flavor, and this is a very flavorful cut. We marinated the steak in, and served it with, an Argentinean chimichurri sauce, appropriate because, as you know, Argentina is home to the famed gauchos, South American cowboys.

Have you ever prepared a cowboy steak cut? If so, what’s your favorite way of doing so? Please let us know in the comments.

 

Cowboy Steak with Chimichurri Sauce Recipe

A cowboy steak is a rather thick (2-inches) cut of meat. It lends itself well to searing first, to get browning, then slower cooking with either indirect heat on the grill, or in the oven.

Ingredients

Steak

• 1 2-lb "Cowboy Steak" (frenched beef rib steak)
• Salt
• Pepper

Chimichurri

• 1 1/2 cups firmly packed fresh flat-leaf parsley, trimmed of thick stems
• 4-6 garlic cloves
• 3 Tbsps fresh oregano leaves
• 3 Tbsp red or white wine vinegar
• 3/4 cup olive oil
• 1 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

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Asian Noodle Salad

Everyone loves a good Asian noodle salad, right? How do you like yours? I like mine with lots of colorful veggies tossed in with the noodles, so it feels more like a “salad” and not just highly seasoned cold noodles. Nothing wrong with plain noodles, mind you! In fact, the beauty of this salad is its flexibility. Add as many or as few extras as you want. I love the colors and crunch of purple cabbage and red bell peppers so they’re in, along with carrots and steamed broccoli.

I’ve also made this salad with almost all noodles and just some sliced green onions and bell pepper. It’s all good. The trick is to let the noodles dry after you cook them, and then dress them with soy sauce alone, so they absorb the flavor of the soy sauce. Then toss in whatever vegetables you are using plus a sweet and sour, ginger garlic sesame dressing. The salad holds up well for several hours, so it’s perfect to take to a potluck too.

 

Asian Noodle Salad Recipe

Prep as many vegetables as you can while the water in step one is heating.

The types of vegetables you can use in this salad is flexible. Don't like broccoli? Leave it out. Prefer napa cabbage to red cabbage? Use it instead.

The recipe calls for the type of Chinese noodles that are typically used for making chow mein. You can also use Japanese soba noodles or any long and skinny, wheat-based pasta (not egg noodles).

Ingredients

• 10 ounces Chinese noodles (for making chow mein)
• 1/3 cup soy sauce
• 2 - 3 cups raw bite-sized broccoli florets (from about 1 head of broccoli)
• Salt
• 4 ounces mung bean sprouts (about 1 1/2 cups)
• 3 green onions, thinly sliced white and green parts
• 1 red bell pepper, cored and seeded, thinly sliced and cut into 1-inch long pieces
• 1/4 large purple cabbage, cored and thinly sliced (about 2 cups)
• 1 large carrot, peeled and slivered (just continue to peel with a peeler)

Dressing:*

• 1-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
• 4 Tbsp white granulated sugar
• 1 medium clove of garlic, roughly chopped
• 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 1/3 cup canola, rice bran, or vegetable oil
• 1/3 cup unseasoned rice vinegar
• 4 teaspoons dark sesame oil

*This dressing is just enough to dress the noodle salad in the proportions given, and then lightly so. If you prefer stronger seasoning or more dressing, just increase the amounts by a half and add a bit more soy sauce to the noodles.

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Dirty Rice

Why is it that so much great food comes out of Louisiana? Case in point, this “dirty” rice. It’s a Cajun classic, and so good that the first time you eat it you’ll wonder where it’s been all your life. It’s basically a rice pilaf that is called “dirty” because it’s cooked with minced chicken livers or gizzards, which infuse it with crispy, tasty browned bits. If you aren’t a liver lover, don’t worry, the rice doesn’t taste like liver, the addition just deepens the overall flavor of the rice, and the bits are so small you can’t really distinguish them.

 

Dirty Rice Recipe

Use green bell peppers if you want a relatively mild result. If you are looking for something spicier, use jalapeño chili peppers.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cup long-grain rice (Carolina, basmati, jasmine, etc)
• 2 cups chicken broth
• 2 cups water
• 3 Tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 pound ground pork
• 1/2 cup chicken livers
• 3 slices of bacon, chopped
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 2 celery stalks, chopped
• 1/2 green bell pepper or 1-3 jalapeños, seeded and chopped
• 1 Tbsp Cajun seasoning
• 2 green onions, chopped

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Moqueca – Brazilian Fish Stew

It seems like every culture with a coastline has their version of a seafood stew. The French have bouillabaise, the Portuguese bacalhoada, New England chowder and San Francisco cioppino.

In Brazil, they make moqueca (pronounced “mo-KEH-kah”), a stew made with fish, onions, garlic, tomatoes, cilantro, and in the northern state of Bahia, coconut milk.

My first encounter with moqueca was a salmon version of the stew prepared by Brazilian blogger Fernanda of Chucrute com Salsicha. So good!

We love making fish stew, but had never thought to use a base of coconut milk. Since then, every Brazilian I’ve met, when the conversation turns to food (as it invariably does), their eyes light up at the mention of moqueca.

A few words about this recipe. First, it’s easy. As exotic as it may sound, you probably have most of the ingredients already in your pantry (you’ll want to get fresh fish), and with prep, making rice, the total time involved is less than an hour.

Second, since this is an American blog, we’re dealing with ingredients we can get here. True Bahian moqueca is made with a fish caught off the coast of northern Brazil.


In our case, we’ll want to use a firm white fish. I used cod for this batch, which is barely firm enough. Halibut would hold up better.

You can also add shrimp or other shell fish to this stew. Palm oil is traditionally used in making moqueca, but it’s hard to come by here, so we are using olive oil.

Finally, adjust the seasonings to taste! If it doesn’t seem flavorful enough to you, you need to add more salt. And probably a little more lime or lemon juice and paprika too.

To any Brazilians who might be reading this blog (Olé Brasil!) if you have a favorite moqueca recipe, please tell us about it the comments.

 

Moqueca – Brazilian Fish Stew Recipe

Traditional moqueca uses palm oil. If you can find it (I checked three stores here and was not able to locate any) add just a tablespoon to the stew along with the coconut milk.

Ingredients

Soup

• 1 1/2 to 2 lbs of fillets of firm white fish such as halibut, swordfish, or cod, rinsed in cold water, pin bones removed, cut into large portions
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 Tbsp lime or lemon juice
• Salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• Olive oil
• 1 cup chopped spring onion, or 1 medium yellow onion, chopped or sliced
• 1/4 cup green onion greens, chopped
• 1/2 yellow and 1/2 red bell pepper, seeded, de-stemmed, chopped (or sliced)
• 2 cups chopped (or sliced) tomatoes
• 1 Tbsp paprika (Hungarian sweet)
• Pinch red pepper flakes
• 1 large bunch of cilantro, chopped with some set aside for garnish
• 1 14-ounce can coconut milk

Rice

• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 cup white rice
• 1 3/4 cups boiling water (check your rice package for the appropriate ratio of liquid to rice for the type of rice you are using)
• 1 teaspoon salt

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