Caesar Salad Dressing

Caesar Salad Dressing is so easy to make, keeps in the fridge for a couple of weeks, and can be made with ingredients you should have lying around (or could easily keep in stock). Once you make you, you'll wonder why you ever bought it before.

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, caesar salad dressing is basically a flavored (sometimes slightly thinned) mayonaisse. They're made exactly the same way. I haven't made mayonaisse yet, but the next time I have occasion to use it (like crab cakes) I certainly will.

Simple way to remember the recipe: two acids (lemon juice, vinegar), two emulsifiers (egg yolk, mustard), two pungent flavorings (garlic, anchovies), two liquids (Worchestershire sauce, oil). There are tons of variants, all of which will yield a good dressing with subtly different flavors. You can vary the type of acids, the kind of mustard, the amount of flavorings, and the type of oil. A light-flavored oil, like canola or light olive oil, is best.

Full recipe:

• 3 tablespoons lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tablespoon mustard, preferably dijon, whole-grain, or spicy
• 3-5 anchovy filets
• 3-5 garlic cloves
• 1 teaspoon Worchestershire sauce
• 1 cup canola or light olive oil

Place all ingredients except oil in blender; blend until smooth. Set blender on lowest speed, and drizzle in oil in a slow stream. When all the oil is added, blend for a few seconds more until smooth. The mixture should be thick; if you prefer a thinner dressing, add some warm water, a tablespoon at a time, until desired consistency is reached. You can also add salt and pepper to taste; I usually just add pepper. Some people also add grated parmesan cheese, but I prefer to add this to the salad itself.

Again, this recipe is infinitely tweakable. I usually juice one lemon, then add enough vinegar to make 5 tablespoons total. You could omit the anchovies and Worchestershire sauce to make it both vegetarian and gluten-free. As much as I love garlic, it's easy to get carried away and make it way too garlicky.

And as for the salad, I love chopped romaine with croutons, and for a main dish, add roasted chicken breast. Top with grated parmesan (or my new favorite, manchego). Diced hard-boiled egg and fresh sliced mushrooms go great in it. (Carrots and cucumbers, not so much).

It's also great for replacing mayo for certain things. I just made a bacon-egg-tomato sandwich with it and it was amazing!

On Ice Cream Making

I've tried various recipes for ice cream. They all have cream, sugar, and milk or half-and-half. But some are eggless, some use whole eggs, egg yolks, egg whites; some use raw eggs, some cook them into a custard. I've had varying degrees of success with each one, but I think I've finally figured out my favorite: eggless, with a splash of booze.

A lot of the egg versions, especially cooked eggs, often taste kind of eggy. When omitting eggs in the recipe, the usual method is to temper the sweet dairy mixture to about 170F, then cool it before freezing.

Alton Brown's "serious vanilla ice cream" recipe is a good start. But many ice cream recipes also include a splash of alcohol (brandy, scotch). The reason is that the alcohol has a lower freezing point, and keeps the ice cream from getting too hard and icy. That's usually my problem; the ice cream is great after a few hours in the freezer, but impossible to eat the following day. (I've broken many plastic containers trying to scoop out rock-hard ice cream.)

Great news! Yesterday I made a batch of Alton's recipe, adding 2 tablespoons of matcha (green tea powder) and a splash of white chocolate liquour. It was delicious last night. Today I tried scooping some, and it wasn't hard at all, and didn't need defrosting! I even used a wimpy tablespoons instead of an ice cream scoop, and it worked.

This is now going to be my go-to basic ice cream recipe.

• 2 cups half-and-half
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 7/8 cup (vanilla) sugar (=1 cup minus 2 tablespoons)
• 1/8 cup apricot preserves (=2 tablespoons)
• 1-2 tablespoons alcohol
• any other flavorings as needed (vanilla bean, extracts, etc.)
  

Heat the dairy, sugar, and preserves to 170F; refrigerate until cooled completely (4+ hours). Add alcohol and freeze per ice cream freezer instructions. Transfer to storage container and freeze at least 3 more hours before eating.

A lot of people freak out about the preserves. (Alton's original recipe calls for peach preserves.) Don't worry. It doesn't taste like peach, or apricot. The preseves provide pectin which improve texture. Peach and apricot are great choices because they subtley enhance the vanilla flavor without making it actually taste like those fruits. You can use any preserve flavor you want; if you're making strawberry ice cream, use strawberry preserves. There will probably be some chunks of preserves in your ice cream base; strain them out if you don't want them.

Likewise, use an alcohol appropriate to the flavor of ice cream you're making. White chocolate liquor is great because it's sweet and creamy and doesn't have a strong flavor, and goes well with just about anything. Coffee liquors like Kahlua are good in chocolate or coffee ice creams. And of course fruity ice creams would do nicely with framboise or crème de cassis. The sky's the limit!

Weights & Measures

One of my pet peeves is when people (particularly those writing or reviewing recipes) don't understand weights and measures. Specifically, people often confuse weight and volume, or they don't simplify numbers appropriately.

I saw a complaint on an ice cream recipe that called for "1.5 oz. cocoa powder, approx. 1/2 cup." This person said that 1/2 cup is equal to 4 oz., and that the recipe didn't make any sense. 1/2 cup is equal to 4 oz... of water. An ounce is a unit of weight; a cup is a unit of volume. Different ingredients have different densities; a cup of cocoa powder is much lighter than a cup of water.

But what really makes me angry is when a recipe calls for "3 teaspoons" or "1.5 teaspoons" or "4 tablespoons" of something. Three teaspoons is equal to one tablespoon. Why would you make something three times harder than it is? 1.5 teaspoons is equal to 1/2 tablespoon, which is again much easier. And four tablespoons? It's the same as 1/4-cup.

I know this is all information most of us only ever saw in the back of our school notebooks when we were bored out of our minds in middle school. But if you're going to cook, much less write recipes, you need to know the very basics:

3 teaspoons in 1 tablespoon
(4 tablespoons in 1/4 cup)
16 tablespoons in one cup
4 cups in a quart

Those are really the most common ones. Most recipes don't bother with pints, gallons, or 1/8 cups. Although, I have been seeing 1/8 cup more and more. (It is, of course, equal to two tablespoons.) I actually keep 1/8 scoops in my sugar and flour so I can measure quickly as needed; lots of recipes call for 2 tablespoons of one or the other, and I can easily count the number of scoops if it's higher (within reason; certainly not when baking).

So anyway, learn your measurements. And while you're at it, get a kitchen scale. Your cup of flour could weigh anywhere between 3 and 6 ounces!

Pasta Roller

My first attempt at making pasta with my new kitchenaid attachments was slightly disastrous, but salvageable. I tried making the pumpkin-sage ravioli recipe in the booklet (adding some ricotta, allspice, and parmesan), and, well, I learned how to use it after some missteps, and learned some other things about making pasta. These attachments save time, but require finesse.

First of all, don't put flaxseed in the dough. Holes appear in the dough around the seeds when you roll it too thin. Also, only roll it to thickness setting "4" and not "5." I had a bunch of ravioli with holes in them, which are no good.

They ended up tasting pretty good, but it was a ton of work. Next time I will do it when I have nothing else to do that day, so I can devote a lot of time to it and then freeze them, making it worthwhile. I have a lot of extra dough I gave up tonight because I just wanted to eat dinner and get it over with.

The pumpkin-sage was pretty good. Matt thought it tasted like little savory pumpkin pies (he also ate an alarming number of the broken ones raw; gross). I have a lot more to try, like mushroom or cheese or dessert ravioli with cocoa pasta dough and sweetened ricotta filling (and pistachios!) I'll post pictures when I make something really exciting.

Ground Turkey Tomato Sauce

Okay, I was supposed to put up pictures and recipes of what to do with that tapenade and sundried tomato spread; that will have to wait a few days. In the meantime, here is one of my favorite new recipes. The Italian-American in me always has to have peas dumped on top of my pasta with meat sauce, but that's optional.

Ground Turkey Tomato Sauce
makes 6-8 servings

• 2 (14-oz) cans whole tomatoes
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
  
• 2 medium onions, diced
• 1 head garlic, roasted
• 1-2 cups diced vegetables, see below
• 1-2 tablespoons capers
• 1 can tomato paste
• 1 lbs. ground turkey, thawed
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon molasses or brown sugar
• 1/2 tablespoon Worchestershire sauce
• 2 bay leaves
• salt, pepper, oregano to taste

1. Sautee half of the onions, 1-2 cups other vegetables, and capers in olive oil over medium heat in a large (cast-iron if you've got it) pan. This is a great time to use up any vegetables you have on hand: carrots, celery, red or green peppers, eggplant, mushrooms, leeks, shallots, more onions, even hot peppers.
2. Drain tomatoes, reserving liquid. Over a sieve, seed tomatoes and add to pan. Continue cooking vegetables and tomatoes until most of the liquid has evaporated.
3. Transfer vegetables and roasted garlic to a blender or food processor; blend until smooth, using reserved liquid to thin as need. Set aside.
4. Meanwhile, in same pan, add the rest of the onions (and more oil if needed), and cook for 1 minute. Add ground turkey and cook until no longer pink. Then add soy sauce, molasses, and Worchestershire sauce. Cook for another minute.
5. Add tomato paste to meat and stir until well-incorporated.
6. Transfer pureed vegetables, meat, and remaining tomato juice to a crock-pot. Add bay leaves and seasonings to taste. Cook on high for 4 hours or low for 6-8. Taste and readjust seasonings before serving.

This is really more of a method than an exact recipe. The soy sauce, molasses, and Worchestershire sauce actually help give the turkey a meatier flavor. I also sometimes add about a teaspoon of beef bouillon for the same reason. The sauce ends up really chunky and hearty, with far less saturated fat than a beef or pork sauce. Like I said, it's also a great way to get rid of vegetables you need to get rid of; I threw in about half an eggplant and half a red pepper that were destined to remain in my fridge indefinitely. You could also add more vegetables to the meat pan so they don't get pureed, and have an even chunkier sauce; mushrooms would be a good candidate for that.

I've been serving this over homemade fettucine, which now that I have a pasta-roller, will be much, much easier to make. The great thing is you can freeze this sauce, and homemade pasta, and buy frozen peas. Then when you want a nice home-cooked meal and don't want to actually cook much, just throw the sauce in a sauce pan (freeze meal-sized portions separately), put on some boiling water, defrost the peas, throw in the frozen pasta (it cookes in under 5 minutes), and serve it all together! You can of course use dried pasta as well, but who has that kind of time?

Sundried Tomato Spread

Okay, maybe you'd actually like a picture of the finished product from the last post. Here's the finished tapenade, accompanied by my sundried tomato spread. These two will be coming together on a single sandwich later. The tapenade is smooth, salty, rich, and complex; the spread is chunky, sweet, earthy, and tangy.

I looked through lots of sundried tomato spread recipes, and most of them had mayonnaise or sour cream or other apocryphal ingredients. I had to design my own, and I think I've come up with something that really works well as a sandwich spread. I guess mayo makes sense if you're looking for a dip, but it still seems...wrong.

Sundried Tomato Spread

• 1 cup sundried tomatoes, packed in oil, drained
• 1-2 tablespoons capers
• 1/2 head (or more) roasted garlic
• 1 teaspoon worchestershire sauce (can replace with soy sauce or salt, if desired)
• 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• handful fresh basil leaves
• dried oregano to taste (about 1 teaspoon)
• salt and pepper to taste

Again, just whir in a food processor until smooth. If it's too chunky you can thin it with some olive oil, water, or even the oil from the sundried tomato jar. The roasted garlic and balsamic vinegar, both sweet themselves, really accentuate the sweetness of the tomatoes. You can use raw garlic for more of a kick, but since I use this with the green olive tapenade (which contains raw garlic), I like the contrast between the two.

Green Olive Tapenade

There are few foods I can absolutely not tolerate; the main one is bleu cheese. But high on the list are black olives and raw tomatoes. I can handle raw tomatoes if they're thinly sliced or diced in a salad or sandwich, especially when they're actually in season. And I thought I didn't like olives at all.

But it turns out that black olives (the most commonly encountered olive) are packaged unripe and set in a solution to make them ripen artificially. I first found out I like green olives when I tried a piece of green olive focaccia. Turns out they're great on Italian sandwiches. If you've never had them, give them a try; a small piece of one by itself. You know what I think they taste like? Salty, oily... root beer. I swear, green olives and root beer share a flavoring of some kind.

So here's my simple green olive tapenade. I'm going traditional here, using the very basics of a tapenade. You can add other things, like herbs (parsley, oregano, basil, rosemary), pepper, maybe even pine nuts. It certainly does not need salt, however.

• 1 cup green olives, pitted
• 1-2 tablespoons capers, drained
  
• 1/2 lemon, juiced
• 2-3 garlic cloves
• 2 anchovy filets
• 1/4 cup olive oil
  

That's it. Just whir it in a food processor until smooth, or do it the old-fashioned way, with a mortar and pestle. Looks pretty, don't it? Leave out the anchovies and you've got yourself a vegetarian and vegen-friendly spread. You might want to add some more capers in that case. It's gluten-free and lactose-free, too!

Serve on bread or crackers, or spread on sandwiches. In fact, this post is the first of many dedicated to Italian-style sandwiches. More later.

By the way, if you do what I did and accidentally buy olives with pits in them, you'll have to pit them yourself. Luckily it's not too hard, just smash them with the side of a large knife, just like you would a garlic clove. (Although, you don't need to use as much force; you can lay your knife on the olive and firmly press down with the heel of your other hand. No need to whack it.) Then just peel away the fruit and discard the pits. Be careful, it's slippery. Here you can see whole olives, smashed olives, pits, and pitted olives.

Bloggining

I need an outlet to talk about everything food-related: baking, cooking, food science, history, anything. There are lots of food blogs out there, and lots of people just as food-obsessed as I am, but I'm hoping at least a few people will be interested in what I have to say. I have three tenets of cooking: what you make should be tastier than what you can buy in a store or restaurant (or at least strive to be), it should be cheaper, and/or it should be worth the effort.

For example, butter? Totally worth making at home; it tastes a hundred times better than butter from the store, you can use the buttermilk by-product, and if you can find some inexpensive cream (this is where Costco or Sam's Club come in handy), the cost is on par with store-bought butter.

And if you like (American, southern, buttermilk) biscuits as much as I do, homemade buttermilk biscuits made with homemade butter and buttermilk are a food miracle that don't come in a can.