Cauliflower grits, chanterelle and the perfect sunny side up egg

breakfast, brunch, egg, fall, Recipes, vegetarian

This cauliflower grits was a result of necessity…. I had a cauliflower in the fridge that really needed to be used. And while I was making our brunch, on a Sunday morning, coming back from Hollywood Farmers market with fresh eggs, chanterelle, and pea shots, the idea came. When we cook cauliflower and blend it, it comes up with an amazing silky, creamy texture. And what is it that we do with grits? We cream it. With butter, cream, mascarpone, or anything else. Just cream it, right?

So while the grits were cooking in simple vegetable stock, I quickly added the cauliflower in a small pot of milk and water, added aromatics, a small onion and a bay leaf. Once that cooked, and the grits was ready, blended the cauliflower in just enough cooking liquid to be able to process and added to the grits. Also remember grits require 1:4 ratio of polenta to liquid. You can reduce it a little bit here, because the cauliflower cream will losen it up. You can play with the texture when mixing everything all together, to your liking.

I am not really keen on standing at the stove and keeping an eye on grits for a long time. So this is a trick I came up with, and it did help me to reduce cooking time. I buy the coarse grits in bulk and blend them superfine in my blender. Do this only when you are not bothered about losing the grits texture, but you want lets’s say a quick brunch option. This fine polenta will cook much quicker.

For dairy free and vegan version:

My original recipe requires milk and I also added eggs to make it a full meal. If you are dairy free or vegan, leave out the eggs and cook the cauliflowers in stock with all the aromatics mentioned below. Once cauliflower is cooked, transfer into blender and blend it with home made, thick cashew milk/cream. When I made a vegan version I served it with radish sprouts and quick pickled radishes.

Ingredients for non vegan version (serves 4)

1/2 cup grits, or the finely processed cornmeal
3-4 cup vegetable stock or water
1/2 small cauliflower torn into florets (the orange one will give a beautiful color to your grits! go for it if you have them)
1 cup whole milk and some water (enough to just cover the florets in the pot)
1 bay leaf
1 small onion
salt and 3-4 black peppercorns
2 cups small chanterelle or any other wild, strong mushroom (see below other dishes)
2 sprigs of thyme
1 tbsp chopped parsley and chive
4 eggs
olive oil for frying eggs
pea shoots or other greens to serve the dish with (it will require something fresh, crunchy with a touch of acid)
lemon juice and olive oil for the greens

Instructions

Add milk, water, bay leaf, peppercorn, salt, onion and cauliflower florets in a small pot. Bring to a boil and cook it covered on low heat until florets are cooked. Don’t overcook, all the cauliflower flavor and bits will disintegrate into your liquid…. and we are not using all the cooking liquid.
Discard onion, bay leaf and peppercorns when cauliflower is cooked.
Transfer into blender and blend into creamy texture with just as much cooking liquid as necessary to process the blending!
In the meantime toast grits on olive oil for a minute, while whisking add vegetable stock. Cook it under constant supervision, stirring frequently. Add just as much liquid so you end up with a thick, firmer grit texture, so the cauliflower can loosen it up.
You can also pay with ratios of grits to cauliflower, depending on how much flavor of the veggie you would like in there.
To finish the dish pan roast mushrooms on butter and olive oil mixture with adding a couple of thyme sprigs. When cooked, discard thyme, and add mix of parsley, chive and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Keep it warm.
Fry eggs on olive oil. Heat olive oil and before it is too high, add eggs, turn down heat and fry slow to keep a nice look.
Put the greens in a bowl and drizzle with a squeeze of lemon juice and some olive oil.

To serve:

In a shallow deep bowl and cauliflower grits, making a dip in the middle for the egg. Put mushrooms and shoots or other greens around the egg, on top of the grits. ENJOY!

And if you like the flavor profiles, you can make other, bit fancier dishes based on the same concept. This is a pot de creme of cauliflower grits with pan roasted mixed wild mushroom with garlic and thyme, parmesan crisps and some spicy nasturtium oil and leaves.

Beet brownies

baking, beets, dessert, fall

Beetroots

They are warm in both color and taste. Sweet, earthy and really beautiful. There are three different varieties always available at the markets here in Southern California. The golden beet with its orange color, the red beet with its dark, purple red meat and the chioggia which is a white red striped beet.

A few days ago I used all three different varieties in a beet salad with walnut and rye bread crumbles and a buttermilk, sheep ricotta foam. Roasted the red and orange beet and left the chioggia raw to show off its amazing beauty.

I was left with lots of red beet. Once I saw a brownie recipe from Georgina Fuggle, who is a British chef, and she used beet in her brownies. So I thought to give it a try, because I really love brownies. There is nothing different than in any other brownies, except for adding grated beets. It turned out really good. In certain spots you can actually taste the beets, and it is a really rich, gooey yummy brownie.

I made a small portion, as you can see in this loaf tin. Because of the richness of the brownie I think this is easily good for 6-8 portions. Especially if you follow my lead and serve it with an eggnog (or vanilla) ice cream and a caramel sauce 🙂

Ingredients for the above size:

4.5 oz good quality 70% dark chocolate
3.5 oz unsalted butter
2 tsp of instant good quality espresso coffee
1/4 lb cleaned, grated raw red beetroot (about 2 smaller ones)
2 eggs, beaten to very good foamy state
7 oz caster sugar
2 tbsp flour
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1 pinch of salt

Instructions

Heat oven to 360 F.
Butter a loaf tin, line it with parchment and butter the parchment too.
Melt dark chocolate, coffee granulates and butter on low heat, very gently.
When completely melted, mix in grated beets, sugar and well beaten eggs.
Sift in flour and cocoa powder and a pinch of salt
Combine very well.
Pour batter into the tin.
Place on middle rack in the oven.
Turn down heat to 350F after about 5 minutes.
Bake for approximately 30 minutes, but keep checking. Exterior should be crunchy, inside gooey.
Let it cool completely in the tin.
Serve it with eggnog ice cream and caramel sauce for the holidays 🙂 or just with fresh red fruits. The first version will be a pretty heavy dessert option.

TIP: You can make caramel sauce by caramelizing cane sugar in a heavy bottom pan, and adding heavy cream to it and melting them together. Or just simply adding brown sugar to heavy cream, bringing all to a boil and cook it for a little while.

Kabocha and shrimp risotto with toasted pumpkin seeds

entree, fall, Recipes, winter squash

Risotto facts

Some people are scared of risotto, some just think it is too much of a hassle. You should not feel any of these. If you understand what happens when making risotto you will never again have problems with making the perfect one.

So risotto is an Italian dish where you need to cook the rice into a creamy consistency. The rice is cooked with wine, stock and at the end creamed some sort of dairy product. The rice has to be cooked, but still needs crunch in the middle, so it is al dente. At the same time the risotto is creamy. So how to achieve this?

Use rice specifically used for making risotto, that is a medium grain variety, fairly large and can tolerate the unique cooking method that removes starch from the rice surface so that it thickens the cooking liquid into a creamy consistency. The most well known type is Arborio, anywhere outside Italy. There are some other varieties too, such as Carnaroli, Vialone Nano, but these are not very easy to get hold of.
Make sure you have everything prepared in advance. Chopped, measured, cleaned or pre cooked on a tray. From start to finish a risotto will need 30 minutes of your undivided attention. There is also a method where you can precook the risotto to about 90%, lay out on a tray to cool quickly, (stop cooking) refrigerate and finish it off in 10 minutes when your guests arrived. (I will explain this method later)
Use right size of pot, meaning for the amount of rice. The pot should not be too big compared to the amount of rice, because you will add too much liquid.
Preheat any liquid to boiling! you will be using for cooking the risotto, such as stock, broth. Also have boiling water ready, in case you run out of stock and the rice still needs liquid to be cooked. This is imperative. The liquid has to be hot constantly, so when you add it to the rice, it will not stop the cooking.
Always add liquid in small amounts, just barely cover rice, and stir constantly. This might sound too much of work, but actually stirring constantly means that the rice grains are subject to constant friction, rubbing off the softened parts constantly, so they can become part of the liquid. If you only let it cook, this particles will not be part of the cooking process, you will just rub off everything in one go, at the end, when you stir it.

Kabocha and shrimp risotto

I decided to use this winter squash variety because of its texture and not too sweet flavor. Kabocha turns into a creamy dream once it is blended. Shrimp goes really well with risotto in general and it is also a classic pairing with this squash.

The squash will be added to the risotto in two different ways. We will roast and puree half of the kabocha and dice and cook the other half.

Instructions

First prepare everything

Peel, deseed kabocha, cut in half. Cut one of the halves into big chunks and roast them on a tray in the oven with olive oil, salt and pepper. Blend to a smooth puree with just the necessary amount of stock, you need for blending. Dice the other half into small cubes. Blanch them in salted boiling water until they are just cooked. Do not overcook, they will fall apart. Immediately drop them in ice water to stop cooking and drain.
In a small amount of vegetable oil deep fry sage leaves. You will need 3-5 on each plate.
Cut each shrimp into bite sizes. Pan sear them on butter, olive oil, seasoned with salt, black pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice.
Toast pumpkin seeds and set aside.
Chop the shallots very finely.
Cut very finely pancetta too.
Measure rice and get it ready.
Measure wine and stock and bring stock to a simmer and keep it warm.
Prep rest of ingredients on a tray: olive oil, butter, fresh sage leaves, salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, mascarpone.

Cooking instructions

Heat olive oil and butter.
Add pancetta, render fat so it becomes crispy.
Add shallots, sweat for a few minutes.
Add rice, stirring constantly and toast for a minute.
Add wine, stirring constantly until it cooked down and almost absorbed fully.
Start adding hot stock. Always add just as much to cover rice, stir constantly and add another ladle only when it is absorbed. Keep doing until rice is al dente, about 20 minutes.
additional step for later consumption: If you want to keep risotto and serve it at a later stage, stop cooking, lay risotto on a tray, cover with plastic foil and refrigerate until next day. When reheating, add some more stock, stir, let it absorb and finish it off as below.
Mix in kabocha puree and mascarpone and add diced squash and shrimp.
Season with salt, ground black pepper and cayenne.
Adjust texture with a little bit of stock if needed.
Plate risotto in a deep bowl, topped with fried sage leaves and toasted pumpkin seeds.

Don’t forget about a glass of light chardonnay! 😉

Enjoy!

Ingredients (yields 4)

1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 big shallot or 2 smaller ones
4 slices of pancetta, cut into fine pieces
1 cup of arborio rice
1/2 cup of white wine
4 cups of vegetable stock
1-2 tablespoon of mascarpone
1 cup of roasted kabocha puree
1 1/2 cup of diced, cooked kabocha
1 lb of shrimp, cleaned, cut and pan seared on little olive oil and butter
salt
black pepper
cayenne pepper
toasted pumpkin seeds
vegetable oil for deep frying sage leaves
sage leaves
optional micro greens

Spaghetti squash with mushroom cashew alfredo, brussels and hazelnuts

entree, fall, pasta, raw, Recipes, vegan, winter squash

I was not really thinking about putting this dish on my blog. When I came up with the recipe, it was really all about the textures and look in my mind. And eventually it turned out to be a very flavorful dish. When my husband came home in the evening, tasted it, and I heard “hmmmmm it is very interesting and yummy”, I knew I had to share it with you. Bear in mind, he is not vegan. Not even vegetarian… Also the dish is very easy to make, so I thought to share.

This dish is all about the fall produce available at the moment at the market.It also has a very classic combination of mushrooms, hazelnuts, cream, brussels sprouts. So good togeher. The “spaghetti” of the dish is simply roasted spaghetti squash. The cashew Alfredo sauce made richer with the umami flavor of sautéed mushrooms. Quickly blanched brussels leaves and toasted hazelnut to finish off the dish. I used those fall colors of the marigold petals, not only to make the dish look prettier, but the petals’ peppery flavor goes so well with the dish.

Ingredients:

1 spaghetti squash
6 cloves of garlic
fresh rosemary strings
salt, black pepper, olive oil for roasting the squash
1/2 cup soaked cashew
almond milk (just as much to get a sauce consistency
1 tbsp nutritional yeast
2 minced garlic bulbs
salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, lemon juice to taste
8 oz mushrooms, chopped
1 tablespoon of a mix of chopped parsley and chive
brussels sprouts taken into leaves
1 tablespoon toasted hazelnuts
1 marigold flower
some micro greens

Instructions:

Cut one medium size spaghetti squash in half. Drizzle generously with olive oil, season with salt, ground black pepper and put one rosemary string and 3 garlic cloves in each halves. Put on a baking tray and bake at 420F for about 40 minutes.
Check with a fork and if the spaghetti strands fall off easily, it is done. Carefully scrape out the spaghettis 🙂 with the fork, set aside to cool.
In the meantime in a blender blend 1/2 cup of soaked cashews, nutritional yeast, minced garlic with enough almond milk to get the texture of sauce.
Add the sautéed mushrooms and chopped herbs, blend together.
Season with salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice. Blend together.
Blanch the brussels sprouts leaves in rapidly boiling, very salty water for 1 minute. Quickly drain and drop in ice water, to stop cooking and retain color.
Plate spaghetti squash and drizzle with the sauce, top with brussels leaves, chopped hazelnut, marigold leaves and some micro herbs.

ENJOY!!!

Jerusalem artichoke soup with goat brie and truffled mushroom sunchocke chip bites

fall, hors devours, soup, vegetarian

Jerusalem artichoke, aka sunchoke is not the most common root vegetable. It is a bumpy, fleshy root vegetable, surprisingly of the sunflower family plants. Its look resembles to ginger roots. Its underground, nutty, starch rich root is mostly used as potato in cooking although it has more distinct flavor.

However it is a versatile vegetable with an amazing good amount of dietary fiber content. Can be eaten raw, boiled, sautéed, roasted, pureed, made into chips. Without a complete list, its best friends are garlic, cheese, lemon, olive oil, parsley, truffles, wine, thyme, tomatoes. If you are vegan the best nuts to combine it with cashew, hazelnut and walnut. You can leave the skin on, especially if you make chips, or if the dish is more rustic and color is not a problem.

This time I made a creamy soup and served it with goat cheese and truffled, sautéed wild mushrooms nestled in between sunchoke chips. It is great to serve them together, the creamy soup with the crunch of the chips and all the supporting flavors are really good. If it is too much work, you can make the soup and serve it with some mushroom and a goat brie toast. Also you can just make the chips with mushrooms and brie and serve them as hors devours.

Sunchoke soup

Ingredients (yields 4-6)

1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 small, fresh thyme branch
2 pounds jerusalem artichoke cleaned, peeled, cubed
1 big garlic clove, grated
1/4 cup dry white wine
3 cup of whole milk
3-4 cup of vegetable stock or water
lemon juice to taste
salt, black pepper to taste
chopped parsley and chive for garnishing
optional : sautéed wild mushroom for garnishing (see instruction at the chip bites
optional: toast to serve it with the soup

Instructions

Melt butter with olive oil. Do not brown it!!!
Add a thyme branch in whole, so you can remove it easily. Sauté for a minute.
Add cubed sunchokes. Sweat the artichoke for a few minutes, constantly stirring, making sure it will not caramelize.
Add smashed garlic and some salt.
Add the white wine. Let the alcohol cook off for a few minutes.
Add stock/water (what you prefer) and whole milk.
Bring to a boil.
I removed thyme at this point so it doesn’t leave a very pronounced flavor. You can leave it if you like the taste but make sure to remove BEFORE blending!
Cover, reduce heat and cook for about 15 minutes in slow simmer.
Check with a fork that the sunchokes are really soft.
There might be a bit of curdling of the milk because of the acidity in the wine. Don’t worry about it.
Transfer to blender. Blend it to a very creamy consistency. Be careful when blending hot soup! Use a towel to cover the middle part of the lid instead of that small plastic bit. This way you can continuously let the steam out.
If you want the soup to have a really creamy, silky texture, you can strain it through a fine mash strainer.
Taste and season with salt, ground black pepper and some lemon juice.

Goat brie and truffled mushroom, sunchoke chip bites

Ingredients

1-2 big sun chokes, sliced 2nd thinnest setting on mandoline (you will need 6 slices for each person, to serve them 3 bites)
1/2 goat brie round, sliced
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp truffled butter (or if you have fresh truffles, go for it. In that case grate over the mushroom sauté when it is done!)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 pack of 8 oz any kinds of mushrooms, preferably mixed and wild, sliced
1 tbsp fresh chopped parsley and tarragon

Instructions for the sautéed mushrooms

Heat oil with butter.
When it is foaming add mushrooms. Stir well, making sure that all the pieces get some of the butter.
Sautee on high heat for about 5 minutes, stirring at some points.
Add salt and ground black pepper and sautee for another few minutes.
When it is done add chopped fresh herbs and either serve immediately or cover with a lid if you need to wait a little bit.

Assembly

Thinly slice (without peeling) the artichokes across their widest part using a mandoline and fry in batches until golden brown. Leave to drain on kitchen paper, season with salt and some black pepper.
Place a piece of goat brie and some mushroom in between 2 slices of the chips.
Serve them on a plate next to the soup.

ENJOY!

Plant based food photography at Matthew Kenney Cuisine – part 1

food photograpy workshop, Matthew Kenney Online Academy, raw, vegan

Many people asked me. Why are you taking a food photography course? Your pictures are so beautiful already! My answer is because I never really learnt this. Everything I do and looks good, comes naturally. Without anyone ever telling me what is good and how to do it. In order to believe and know that I actually do the right thing, as professionals do, I decided I have to learn this. So first I got lots of books from my husband. As I was reading through them, I realized I was doing the right thing, just never knew this is how professionals doing it.

And by now I got to a point where I felt the need of a structured, brief course that takes me through from the beginning to the end of food photography, using natural light. To make sure I covered everything, I know what happens and why and when a shot is great I will not be standing there and asking myself. OK, it looks amazing. But why? And how did I do it? And how can I recreate it next time? Without thinking about it and trying? This is why I am doing this online course now. The first part is about using natural light in food photography and it takes 2 weeks. The next course lasts 2 weeks again and that is an advanced course introducing studio lighting and other techniques to your photography.

DAY 1 was all about getting closer to your camera,

using manual mode, having the right settings for shooting, image size, image format, white balance etc. For those of us who already do photography this is a good summary and also help from professional photographers if you have any problems with settings on your camera. You will be taking random shots of any kind of still life to experiment with aperture and shutter speed, over and under expose images.

DAY 2 is about lens

Lens choice for food photography, focal length, capability of lenses. If you are a beginner in food photography, this will help you chose the right lens and makes you understand why that will be good for the task. This will make you experiment with your zoom and prime lens at the same focal length to see whether there is any difference or not. To me it turned out that my old Sigma zoom lens can take similar quality shots at 50mm like my Nikon 50mm lens I have for food photography. But it doesn’t mean that there was no point buying the prime lens 🙂

DAY 3 is about the exposure triangle.

You will be taught how ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture affect each other and how to compensate one with the other. You will get into details to see what different ISO settings mean to your image, how the size of aperture changes your photo and what different shutter speeds can be used for.

DAY 4 Let’s get immersed in selective focus and depth of field

You will learn what depth of field means, how different depth of field settings change your image. Experiment with same settings, but different aperture. Which one suits your image more? Which one helps you tell something in your photo?

Also learn about selective focus. In any given shot focus has to be somewhere. But where? Today is about taking shots of the same setting but different focus points.

In my examples selective focus is shifting from foreground to background.

foreground

middle

background

And since this is a plant based food photography course, the food that we shoot is always blant based. For certain assignment you will not only shoot any kind of food but will also make something, raw and vegan for the assignment. You will get a recipe guide for these so you can make everything taste really good and eat at the end of the well deserved working day! 🙂

We had the first food related assignment when we got to practicing depth of field.

Here we had to prepare these raw, vegan “cacao mint cremes” and take shots using different depth of field.

I warn you! These cremes are not easy to make. And not because of the complexity of the recipe, but the fact that they melt very easily and they have to be kept in fridge or even freezer if you want to make sure they look good in the shots.

You can see the difference it depth of field. In order to see more details in the picture, outside your focal plane, you have to adjust the aperture. Which shot do you prefer? Which one suits the topic and image more? I think picture 1 is better here, because you get more details of the cremes, and at the same time a bit of blur, to achieve a nice feel to the shot.

And how to make these cookies? Recipe adapted from Matthew Kenney Cuisine with some adjustments I made, so the overall taste is not that sweet. It is still sweet though!

I didn’t add the mint leaves either, that the recipe calls for, I left it in.

My instructions, based on the experience 🙂

To make these cremes, first I blended the nuts, then added all the other ingredients from the list below, except for the coconut flour, and blended it to a creamy texture. Once I had a nice creamy mix, I removed it from the blender and mixed it with a spatula with the coconut flour in a bowl. We are using coconut oil so when the cookies are cool, they firm up. Place the mixture covered, in the fridge and wait until it firms up. Then remove from the fridge and shape it to a nice log. At this point I covered it in cling film and put it in the freezer. Once it was frozen, I took it out, waited just until my knife was able to cut it and quickly slices into medallions. That point I put them back in the fridge and prepared the chocolate maple glaze. Once the glaze was mixed properly into a smooth texture, I took out the medallions, dipped them in the glaze, placed them on a rack, sprinkled over the raw cacao nibs and immediately back in the FREEZER! 🙂 If the glaze starts to firm, warm it up a bit so that you can use it efficiently. Once it is frozen, ready to be photographed. For consumption, keep in fridge until you eat them. ENJOY!

Ingredients

1 cup coconut flour
1 cup cashews
1⁄2 cup macadamia nuts
1/2 cup agave
1⁄4 cup chopped mint leaves
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon lemon juice
pinch salt
1⁄2 cup coconut oil, melted

For the chocolate maple glaze mix until smooth:

1 maple syrup or agave
1 cup cacao powder
2 tbs coconut oil, melted

To garnish: raw cacao nibs

And eventually we got to DAY5, last day of the first week.

Day 5 was all about practicing everything we learnt in the first 4 days and bringing all the knowledge into plated food and try and present them in the best possible way.

We got to prepare two very simple raw salads. One is a fruit carpaccio of our chosen fruits and the other one is a fresh, green salad with a simple vinaigrette. The beauty of the raw vegetables and fruits was the best possible subject to practice everything we learnt and start taking shots of plated food that defines our style as food photographers.

For the fruit carpaccio I chose to use peach and strawberries.

They taste really good together and the colors are amazing in the photo. According to the recipe I made a simple syrup with wild flower honey, lemon juice and rose water. I drizzled it over and carefully around the fruits. Pistachio and dried rose petals decorated the dish. I also decided to add some lemon balm and later lemon verbena leaves to bring some green in the shot and add some interesting element especially for the close up.

As for the green salad I chose greens that can keep their shape, in this instance mache rosettes and the firm leaves of a head of romain lettuce.

These greens helped me to create a nice plate of food without just piling leaves on top of each other. After adding the salad leaves on the plate I felt that the images do not look good. And that is when I decided to use up all the negative space on the plate for the dressing. I finished off the salad with some garlic chive blossoms and marigold petals. These are both edible flowers and not only bring some color to the dish but also deliver flavor. The purple garlic chive blossom tastes like garlic and chive and the marigold petals have a peppery taste. Perfect with the simple herb infused – lemon vinaigrette.

And now I am ready for Week 2 when we will be learning more about natural light, light shaping tools, composition and framing, height and angle of view. See you back in a week for the second part!