Best of 2012: Dessert

This year, my dessert-making was guided by two principal influences: the creativity of Momofuku Milk Bar pastry chef Christina Tosi and the ice cream wizardry of Jeni Britton Bauer. Whether I was faithfully re-creating their recipes or inspired by their techniques to whip up an original creation, the results always hit the sweet spot.

From Tosi, I found a cookie so delicious it rivals my all-time favorite (peanut butter), the Corn Cookie, which is like the sweetest corn bread transformed into a cookie. I also enjoyed making her Crack Pie just the other week.

After making a few of Bauer’s ice creams last year, I felt free to apply her technique to come up with flavors of my own. A favorite from early in the year to coincide with my week of olive oil themed content was, naturally, Olive Oil Ice Cream with a dark chocolate sauce.

Then I mashed up ideas from both of these chefs for two recipes: A Blackberry-Vanilla Ice Cream Pie with Corn Cookie Crust, which combined a Bauer ice cream recipe with Tosi’s idea to grind up corn cookies and use them as ice cream pie crust. Even more adventurous was the Cereal Milk Baked Alaska, which used Tosi’s idea of using sugary kids’ cereal as flavoring in ice cream but made with Bauer’s technique, encased in an oven-browned meringue over brown butter cake.

A couple of my desserts got special recognition this year, which was very nice to experience. In the summer, my Chocolate Cake with Peanut Butter Frosting won my office dessert contest. And in the run-up to Thanksgiving, the New York Times Diner’s Journal included a mention of my Apple Pie with Vodka Crust, based on a recipe from America’s Test Kitchen.

I went a little cookie crazy a few weeks ago. Besides the Corn Cookies, I featured my long-time favorite, Peanut Butter, and the holidays wouldn’t be complete without these Old-Fashioned Sugar Cookies from an old Mary Engelbreit recipe.

Olive Oil Ice Cream (with Dark Chocolate Sauce)

Here's a good olive oil week follow-up. Everyone knows olive oil is common in appetizers, salads and entrees. But have you tried it in dessert?

That golden-green fruit nectar is creeping onto pastry menus. As I mentioned, I tried olive oil cake in Napa, which I've also tried making (wasn't one my bests, but interesting). This last weekend, I decided I wanted to take it to a truly sacred dessert place: ice cream.

Ice cream has certainly been the subject of a lot of experiments of late and, since acquiring an ice cream maker 2 years ago, I've had a lot of fun making homemade flavors like bacon-maple, bourbon-pecan and salted caramel. Yummy!

This dish was inspired, in part, by Phoebe Damrosch's description in Service Included of a dessert served at Thomas Keller's New York restaurant Per Se: thyme ice cream, covered with a salted dark chocolate wafer onto which warm olive oil is poured.

I chickened out at using thyme, but instead decided to make salted olive oil ice cream with a deeply dark chocolate sauce.

I turned to Jeni Britton Bauer's trusted Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home Cookbook, which includes recipes for olive oil ice cream with sea-salted pepitas and extra-bitter hot fudge sauce. I used her fudge sauce recipe outright, but made some modifications to the ice cream.

Her ice cream technique is a little different. Most homemade ice creams call for egg yolks, making them technically frozen custards, which require the mixture to be cooked to a precise temperature. Too high and the eggs could curdle, too low and they aren't cooked, a potential health risk.

Jeni's ice cream doesn't have eggs; instead, it's thickened with cream cheese and cornstarch, which might sound odd, but so far hasn't resulted in any noticeably unusual flavors...other than her ice creams are unusually good. It also means less precision is required, although you have to be careful the cream and milk mixture doesn't boil over.

It's best to set everything out before beginning one of her recipes, since once you get started, timing is important. I put the milk and cornstarch slurry in a 1-cup liquid measuring cup and the salt and cream cheese in a large (8-cup) liquid measuring cup, since its spout makes it easy to pour the hot, complete mixture into a large ziplock bag.

For my modifications, I omitted the pepitas, since I didn't want them competing with the olive oil and chocolate, doubled the salt, in a nod to the Per Se dish, and I doubled the amount of olive oil her recipe called for, again to put more emphasis on the olive oil flavor. I used Columela extra-virgin olive oil, a well-rounded, full-flavored oil from Spain.

Salty Olive Oil Ice Cream
Adapted from Olive Oil Ice Cream with Sea-Salted Pepitas from Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home by Jeni Britton Bauer

2 cups whole milk
1 tbsp plus 1 tsp cornstarch
3 tbsp cream cheese, softened
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp light corn syrup
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1. Mix 2 tbsp of the milk with the cornstarch in a small bowl or measuring cup to make a slurry. Combine cream cheese and salt in a large bowl (preferably one with a pour spout). Fill another large bowl with ice and water.

2. Combine the remaining milk, cream, sugar and corn syrup in a 4-quart saucepan. Bring to boil over medium-high heat and boil for 4 minutes (watch carefully to avoid mixture boiling over; if it threatens to, just remove the pan from the heat for a few seconds and stir). Remove from the heat and slowly whisk in the cornstarch slurry.

3. Boil the mixture again over medium-high heat and cook, stirring, for about a minute until slightly thickened. Remove from the heat. Gradually whisk the hot mixture into the cream cheese until smooth. Add the olive oil and whisk until well blended. Set a 1-gallon ziplock bag into the ice water bath and pour the hot mixture into the bag. Let stand until cold, about 30 minutes. Transfer to the refrigerator until ready to use.

4. Process the cooled mixture in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions. Freeze in freezer until firm.

Extra-Bitter Hot Fudge Sauce
From Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home by Jeni Britton Bauer

1 cup water
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup light corn syrup
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3 oz. unsweetened chocolate, chopped
5 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped

1. Combine the water, sugar and corn syrup in a medium-size saucepan and bring to boil over medium-high heat, stirring to dissolve sugar. Remove from heat and whisk in the cocoa powder until well combined. Add vanilla and whisk until smooth.

2. Add the chopped chocolate and let stand for about 3 minutes. Stir with a spoon or spatula until the chocolate is melted and the sauce has a smooth consistency. Serve warm or refrigerate (it can be rewarmed in the microwave; according to Jeni, it will last in the fridge for 2 months).

UC Davis Olive Center

Depending on who you listen to, olive oil is either a healthful, handmade-in-Tuscany, cold first pressed product with ancient history or an adulterated oil blend from questionable origins whose distribution is influenced by an international ring of fraudsters.

As I explored last week, olive oil, particularly extra-virgin olive oil, is an amazing food product, but unfortunately has been subject to suspect market practices, creating consumer confusion and, in some cases, representing fraud. Although there are international and domestic standards to guide olive oil production, there is not enough enforcement to prevent low quality or adulterated product from reaching store shelves.

Furthermore, as the demand for olive oil increases, the pressure to satisfy that demand by cutting corners on quality could increase. This makes it difficult for the consumer who wants quality olive oil to know what to do.

But if knowledge is power, then the University of California - Davis Olive Center may prove to be a useful tool for empowering olive oil consumers and producers alike.

Launched in 2008, the center, part of the university's agricultural school (specifically the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science), claims to be North America's only education and research center focused on the cultivation of olives.

Their research page has a number of interesting reports, particularly the July 2010 report on the results of testing European and American olive oils. They subjected 14 imported oils (3 samples each) and 5 domestic oils (2 samples each) to a battery of 10 chemical and sensory tests.

The study's results showed that most of the samples of imported oil failed some of the tests, while 9 of the 10 California oil samples passed all of the tests, including oils from two of the producers in my taste test (California Olive Ranch and McEvoy Ranch).

It wasn't all bad news for the big-name imports. Two of the best performers were store brands: Costco's Kirkland Organic and Walmart's Great Value 100% performed well, with two of their three samples passing all of the tests and the other samples failing only one each (one Walmart sample did not pass the test for elevated levels of pyropheophytins, which can indicate oxidation or adulteration, and one Costco sample failed the sensory test, e.g. taste, odor and "mouthfeel"). Filippo Berio came close, with two samples failing only the sensory test.

On the other end, Mazola's three samples failed three or four tests each. And a couple had mixed results: Both Colavita and Safeway Select had one sample that passed all the tests but another that failed five.

I found this study to be very illuminating, although I reserve a certain level of skepticism because the study was funded by California olive oil producers Corto Olive and California Olive Ranch (the ones who fared well in the tests). However, these results are corroborated by America's Test Kitchen's olive oil taste tests, which showed that California olive oils hold promise for competing with established import brands.

Olive Oil Tasting

Reading about extra-virgin olive oil lately has given me a greater appreciation for its flavor. I hadn't really thought about the fact that different oils are made with different types of olives and that different blends could yield dramatically different flavors.

Good extra-virgin olive oil presents a balance of three flavors: fruity, bitter and peppery, with the last being expressed mostly at the finish. Yet the specific character of the oil's flavor can vary depending on the year and the type of olive (or olives) it contains. In that, it's not dissimilar from wine. Perhaps it's not a coincidence that olives grow well in many of the same areas where grapes do.

Serious tasters sample olive oil in tulip glasses tinted blue to remove any prejudice from oil's color. Very fresh olive oil will be green, but just because it's turned its usual golden color doesn't mean it's spoiled. Of course, I just used a teaspoon, so I saw what color they were, which was mostly golden with a slight green hue except for the grocery store brand, which was browner.

The Contenders

I decided I needed to conduct my own tasting. On hand were two olive oils:

California Olive Ranch (everyday oil). This is what I've been using as my everyday go-to oil. I started buying it after reading the UC Davis study comparing California oils to European imports. California Olive Ranch produces high quality extra-virgin olive oil at a fraction of the price you'd pay for other brands, due to their high-density planting technique and mechanical harvesting. In fact, my local grocery store recently started selling their 750 ml bottle for $9, which makes them competitive with the major Italian brands. In addition to this product, which I assume is a blend, the company sells higher-priced specialty olive oils, including single-varietal offerings of Arbequina (which I use for salads at work) and Arbosana. In a recent test of California oils, America's Test Kitchen rated their Arbequina just below their favorite oil, Columela from Spain.

Lava Vine. Lava Vine is a small winery near Calistoga in Napa Valley. Some other time I'll tell you about the wonderful time I had tasting wines there. One of the coolest things about having this oil on hand is that Lava Vine is a small operation, so my tasting there was done by the guy who makes it. He poured it over a piece of dark chocolate with a sprinkle of salt. So good.

To round out a good test, I decided to add three more oils:

McEvoy Ranch. The idea that California could one day produce enough olive oil to replace many imports in grocery stores is very appealing. Much has been written about the benefits of buying food produced closer to home--it's cheaper, better for the environment and fresher, so it tastes better too. There's no reason not to extend this thinking to olive oil. I came across McEvoy Ranch by luck. One morning after I'd reviewed the UC Davis oil study (which features McEvoy Ranch), I just happened to go into Cowgirl Creamery, which sells McEvoy Ranch oil from a large vat to protect its freshness. Score! Their oil is a blend of six Italian olive varietals: Frantoio, Leccino, Pendolino, Maurino, Leccio del Corno and Coratina.

Columela. This Spanish oil remains America's Test Kitchen's favorite. It is a blend of Hojiblanca, Picual, Arbequina and Ocal olives. It is distributed by Anfora Quality Products and I found it in my local grocery store.

Grocery Store Brand. To have a "control" so to speak against all these supposedly high-class oils, I decided to ground the study by getting what for most consumers would be the most basic extra-virgin oil available: the store brand. Having read Extra Virginity, right away I'm suspicious. Since I know my grocery store doesn't make olive oil, they've certainly had to purchase this from a supplier of some sort. It claims to be a product of Italy, Spain, Tunisia, Turkey and Argentina, although I wonder if that means it could be from any of them, rather than a blend of all of them. Also, unlike all the other choices, it comes in a clear bottle, and since light damages olive oil, this is also suspect.

The Results

Although I wanted to pick a favorite, I find I cannot, because four of them are really good and all a bit different.

Least favorite - Grocery store brand. This one's easy: the grocery store brand. It really is inferior. Compared to the others, it has noticeably less flavor with just slight bitter and peppery flavors. I can't say it's at all fruity.

Boldest - McEvoy Ranch. This oil really packs a punch, with assertive flavors, dominated by bitterness and a big peppery finish. This is an olive oil lover's olive oil.

Most unique - Lava Vine. This has a nice fruity slightly bitter flavor that's markedly different from the Columela, which is also pretty fruity. This is the only one that made my cough (not a bad thing--a good peppery finish should produce a little cough).

Most well-rounded - Columela. This one has a very fruity flavor and is pretty smooth with the least bitterness. Little bit peppery on the finish.

Best value - California Olive Ranch. This one is nicely balanced between being fruity and peppery with a slight bitterness. It holds its own against these other brands and at a fraction of their cost, makes it an excellent buy.

Tom Mueller, Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil

The olive branch is an international symbol of peace. And while peace can develop from nations deciding to set aside their differences, historically, peace is as likely to be the outcome of conquest.

The history, present and possibly the future of olive oil itself is just as two-sided, as skillfully revealed in Tom Mueller's Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil. While many of us see olive oil as a healthful and flavorful all-purpose cooking oil with a golden-green glow produced in pastoral Italian villas, Mueller's examination uncovers its scandalous underbelly.

Historically, olive oil has played important roles in Mediterranean civilizations going back as far as the Greeks and Romans. Its current dark side is reflected in its past, where olive oil has been used in both sacred religious rituals and witchcraft. As interesting as the history is, it's the modern issues that most interested me.

Sure, extra-virgin olive oil is amazing stuff, and Mueller spends plenty of time traveling the world to meet with true believers who produce high-quality olive oil as a labor of love. But he also shows how global market forces, seeking to satisfy a growing a demand for extra-virgin olive oil, are pushing some less scrupulous producers to pass off lower quality olive oil and even olive oil adulterated with vegetables oils as extra-virgin olive oil.

The problem is so pervasive and longstanding that many consumers aren't even aware of what extra-virgin olive oil should taste like. They've been buying inferior product for so long and don't know the difference. Furthermore, many consumers might not even like real extra-virgin olive oil if they tried it, given its intense combination of fruity, bitter and peppery flavors--the last of which will make you cough if you ingest at least a spoonful straight.

Mueller tackles these and other types of deviousness with first-person accounts of his meetings with large-scale producers, independent farmers and government officials. He also reveals how much marketing plays into our perception of olive oil. That bottle with the sunny Italian villa on it? More than likely, the stuff in the bottle was from olives grown and processed in Spain, which accounts for an increasing portion of olive oil bottled in Italian and then sold with no mention of its true Spanish heritage.

With lax international standards and governments unwilling to enforce what standards they do have (The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, for example, has taken a pass, since poor quality olive oil, although a rip-off, does not generally pose a health risk), buyers have to be particularly saavy about knowing what they're buying and who they're buying it from. In an appendix, Mueller outlines resources and tips for choosing good oil.

His journey eventually brings him to California, a minor olive oil producer globally, but a potentially important one in creating a new world order for quality oils, given the ideal agricultural conditions of California combined with the sizable and growing U.S. market for olive oil. There, a small number of producers, particularly in northern California, are putting a lot of care and energy into the burgeoning domestic market for quality extra-virgin olive oil.

My hopes were dashed though when I read this ominous line: "The United States of America is an oil criminal's dream." Despite the good example being set in northern California, apparently in southern California, trouble is brewing, with Mueller describing Los Angeles as a hub for oil fraud where soybean, seed and cottonseed oils are being blended with low-grade olive oil and sold as extra-virgin. It seems the fraud of the old world is alive in well in the new one.

It's no surprise then that in the epilogue of Mueller's book he sees a crossroads: "Are we witnessing a renaissance in olive oil, or the death of an industry?" Certainly, good consumer education, such as this book provides, is an important step in helping to ensure we realize the former.

Olive Oil, A Primer

Maneuvering the olive oil shelf is tricky. In addition to the issues raised in Tom Mueller's book and the University of California studies, there's so much "marketing speak" around olive oil that it's hard to know what you're really buying. Here's my attempt to make some sense of it.

Let's start with the basic question: what is olive oil? Unlike most other common cooking oils, olive oil is really a form of fruit juice squeezed from olives, the fruit of the olive tree. Traditionally, olive oil was extracted by pressing or crushing the olives with heavy stones. Today, the more modern centrifuge is the common industrial method, improving efficiency and quality.

There are two basic types of olive oil: virgin and refined.

Virgin olive oil is that obtained from olives only be mechanical means: traditionally the press or the modern centrifuge. Thus the oil has undergone no chemical alteration, but merely separated from the water, flesh and pit of the olive. Some important virgin oil terms:

Extra-virgin olive oil refers to the highest quality of virgin olive oil. The technical, albeit subjective definition, is oil free from any flavor defects and that has a noticeable fruity flavor. The International Olive Council (IOC) has further defined standards for extra-virgin olive oil, which state that the oil's oleic acidity should be no more than .08 percent. The IOC's lower grades of virgin olive oil are virgin, ordinary virgin and lampante, the last of which is literally "lamp oil" not fit for human consumption. Extra-virgin oil is suitable for a variety of uses, although not high-temperature cooking, since the heat can alter the olive oil's flavor and the oil has a lower smoke point than refined olive oil.

Refined olive oil is olive oil that has gone through a chemical process to remove unwanted flavors and odors. When sold, it is often mixed with some extra-virgin olive oil to add back some flavor, although compared to extra-virgin oil, it has very little olive flavor. It has a high smoke point and lacks flavors that can turn bad from high heat. Thus, this oil is more suited for high-heat cooking, similar to vegetable, canola or peanut oil.

So what do you find in the grocery store? Generally, there's lots of extra-virgin olive oil, with little or no options that claim to be merely "virgin" or "ordinary virgin" (if you see "lampante" in the store, run). Refined olive oils are sold under a variety of names, including light, extra light, pure, classic or just plain "olive oil."

Although many refined olive oils carry the same FDA-approved health claim as extra-virgin olive oils, the refining will likely mean they are lower in antioxidants than extra-virgin olive oil. Antioxidants in extra-virgin olive oil are also destroyed over time and from exposure to light, so it's better to buy oil that's bottled in dark glass. Despite the use of the "light" label, all olive oil has the same fat content.

There is disagreement about whether extra-virgin olive oil should be used for cooking involving heat. Some suggest that refined olive oil should be used instead, since the delicate flavors of extra-virgin olive oil are destroyed and high heat could even make it taste bitter. Others disagree, including myself. I saute with extra-virgin olive oil on medium heat all the time and my food turns out great. If I was doing something with high heat, I would use another oil, however (like vegetable or canola) but for my usual purposes, I see no reason to substitute refined olive oil.

Later in the week, I'll do a taste test of a selection of California and European oils.

(Sources of information in this post include Tom's Mueller's Extra Virginity, The World's Healthiest Foods, and Wikipedia.)

Olive Oil Week

It's Olive Oil Week at Cook In / Dine Out. This week, I'm going to take an in-depth look at one of the most important ingredients in the western culinary tradition, particularly for Mediterranean cuisine.

America's appetite for olive oil has increased dramatically in recent years, with consumption in 2011 having tripled from that of 20 years ago, according to the International Olive Council (IOC). What may have once been considered an exotic import is now an everyday item in the grocery store.

And it's not all imports. Domestic production of olive oil, although a very small slice of global oil production, has tripled in the last 4 years and IOC expects it to double again this year.

My early experience with olive oil dates baco to the '90s when I began cooking. Olive oil was new to me then and was a common ingredient in the Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso recipes I was making, such as black bean soup, mediterranean chicken salad and chicken fajitas. I remember buying little bottle of Pompeiian brand olive oil and there being little selection in the grocery story.

Although I've cooked with olive pretty continuously since then, my eyes were opened even wider during a trip to Napa last year when I was exposed to the burgeoning domestic olive oil production of northern California. Although we were in wine country, it might as well have been olive country, as there was a palpable excitement about olive oil. Our lunch at the Culinary Institute of America featured olive oil prominently in every course, even dessert (olive oil cake). One of the wineries we visited, Lava Vine, also produces olive oil, which we got to sample poured over some samples of dark chocolate. I'd intended the trip to be a culinary experience, but I didn't expect olive oil was going to be such a big part of it.

This week I'm going to discuss the flavors, research and controversies around olive oil. I'm going to write about Extra Virginity, Tom Mueller's insightful book about the history and modern tradition of olive oil. I'm going to review the latest research of the University of California - Davis Olive Center, which has pitted California olive oils against old world brands with chemical and sensory tests to determine purity and quality and I'm going to conduct my own taste tests to see which extra-virgin oils I like best.

(Pictured above: The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone, the CIA's Napa Valley campus, which features an oleoteca--an olive oil bar for sampling oils in the school's gift shop.)

Kale "Caesar" Salad

This month's GQ featured a kale salad recipe adapted from the Black Kale Salad served in Brooklyn's Five Leaves restaurant. The magazine described it as a clever take on a the classic Caesar and I was intrigued.

Kale salad seems to be all the rage these days, at least judging from my limited sample (I also saw it on a menu in New York recently and my mom has been talking about it). And since I'm still in the post-holidays-need-to-be-good phase, creative dinner salads are perfect.

I was a little apprehensive about the kale as the salad green. I tasted a bit of it and it was much tougher than lettuce. My mom reassured me that it would be good though, so I cut it into a fine chiffonade somewhere between 1/8- and 1/4-inch wide.

For the hazelnuts, after toasting them on the stove, I used the kitchen towel technique to remove their skins, which actually worked, for the most part--the skins came off about half the nuts. I used the skinless ones for the salad and saved the rest for later.

I was excited the recipe called for aged Gouda, which is an amazing cheese. It doesn't taste much like gouda, more like an earthier Parmigiano-Reggiano. It's a hard cheese with that intriguing crystallized texture you get with good Parmesan.

Although the recipe called for bacon, which I'm sure would be very delicious here, I substituted sauteed chicken to make it a healthier main-dish salad. To compensate for the lack of smokiness, I spiced the chicken with smoked paprika.

One issue I had with the GQ recipe was that it made a pint of dressing, which is way, way too much. That's like a big dinner party worth of dressing or a week of Ceasar salads for two. So I cut it down to about 1/6 of the original amount, omitting the lime, egg yolks (not doing raw eggs) and anchovy, for which I compensated with a bit more Worcestershire. Since I was making a smaller volume, I heated the milk and garlic in the microwave instead of in a pan. This took a bit of trial and error, as I boiled it over when I set the heat to 50 percent. I think about 20 percent for a minute would probably do it. I used the opposite end of a cocktail muddler to mash the garlic and milk into a paste. I also used smoked sea salt for this, but you could use regular.

Lastly, for anyone who thinks it odd that I'm touting a recipe from GQ, the magazine has quite good food writing. It was nominated for last year's James Beard Award for Food Section of a General Interest Publication, along with the winner, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Washington Post.

Kale Caesar Salad
Adapted from Five Leaves' Chopped Black Kale Salad, GQ, January 2012
(serves two as a main course)

2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
3/4 lb chicken breast cutlets
smoked paprika
fresh-ground black pepper
seasoned salt
1/4 cup hazelnuts
1/4 cup finely shredded aged gouda
about 6-8 kale leaves

dressing:
1 clove garlic, minced
4 tsp. milk
1/4 tsp. lemon zest
1 tsp. lemon juice
1/2 tsp. sherry vinegar
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
ground smoked sea salt and fresh-ground black pepper to taste

1. Heat 2 tbsp olive oil in a medium (10-inch) stainless steel pan over medium heat. Pat chicken dry and add to pan when oil is hot (chicken should sizzle). Season with smoked paprika, seasoned salt and fresh-ground black pepper to taste, cooking for about 10 minutes, turning halfway. Remove chicken from pan and set aside to cool.

2. Toast hazelnuts in a small (8-inch) pan over medium-low heat, tossing occasionally. When fragrant, remove from pan and wrap with a clean dish towel. After about a minute, rub the nuts through the towel to remove nuts' skins. Set nuts aside to cool.

3. Slice kale leaves to remove tough inner stems. Stack leaves and cut in thin strips, about 1/8- to 1/4-inch wide.

4. To make dressing, combine minced garlic and milk in a small bowl and microwave at a medium-low setting until the garlic is soft and fragrant, about a minute. Mash to a paste. Add lemon juice and zest, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce and 1/4 cup olive oil. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Whisk until well combined.

5. Toss kale with dressing and serve topped with chicken, nuts and cheese.

Risotto with Sausage, Parsnips and Kale

This dish is a slight modification of this week's Risotto with Parsnips and Green recipe from the New York Times that I was excited about Wednesday. It didn't disappoint, delivering a nice mix of flavors from the sweetness of the parsnips and the bitter kale.

I find the tricky thing with risotto is getting the texture just right. Cook it too fast and the rice will be tough. Cook it too long and you end up with a gooey, squishy mess. The texture of this risotto turned out perfectly, the grains al dente with starchy-tangy creaminess lightly enveloping them. I used a dutch oven to cook the rice. In my experience, dutch ovens cook hotter than other pans, so I reduced the recipe's cooking temperature.

First quibble with the recipe as written is the cooking time, which I find that recipes often under estimate. It says "about 40 minutes," which is not enough time. Working as efficiently as possible, this took me an hour. To help with timing, start by preheating the oven and then prepping the parsnips for roasting. Then, while you're waiting for the oven to heat up, boil the water and prep the kale. Don't worry if the parsnips look a little burnt around the edges (as shown below). They tasted great and even the photo with the NYT recipe showed them like that.

Second quibble is that the recipe says to cook the kale in the boiling water "very briefly." What does that mean? I decided it was going to be enough time for me to stir the kale once, get the colander out the cupboard and put it in the sink and stir the kale again before draining it. That seemed to do the trick as it turned out great.

The Italian sausage I added provided a nice meaty element, complimenting the other vegetables, as well as tying the dish to my spinach-fennel salad (since Italian sausage has fennel seed). I added the sausage at the beginning of the step to sauté the sage and garlic. I drained off most of the rendered sausage fat, but since there was still some fat in the pan, I omitted the 1 tablespoon of olive oil from step four. I kept the butter though, since that's an important flavor in the dish.

To serve with this, I prepared a simple salad of baby spinach and fennel with a lemon-honey dressing. I used a mandolin on the lowest setting (1/16-inch) to thinly slice the fennel bulb. For the dressing, I combined lemon juice with honey, dried thyme, salt, pepper and extra-virgin olive oil.

Risotto with Sausage, Parsnips and Kale

(Adapted from The New York Times' Risotto with Parsnips and Greens)

Cooking time: About 1 hour

1/2 pound parsnips (about four)

Salt and fresh-ground black pepper to taste

2 tsp plus 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

1/2 pound kale (about 3 cups chopped)

1 sweet onion, finely diced

1 1/2 cups arborio rice

1/4 cup dry white wine (I used sauvignon blanc)

4 cups unsalted chicken broth

1/2 pound mild Italian sausage, removed from casings (could chicken or pork)

2 tbsp butter

3 garlic cloves, minced

8 sage leaves, roughly chopped

1/2 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Peel the parsnips, quarter them lengthwise, and remove the tough core with a paring knife. Cut into 1/2-inch random shapes, put in a roasting pan, season with salt and coat with 2 teaspoons of olive oil. Roast until tender and lightly browned, about 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and set aside.

2. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Remove the stems from the kale and cut it into 1/2-inch-wide ribbons. Cook kale very briefly in the boiling water (about 1 minute). Drain, cool and squeeze dry. Set aside.

3. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a dutch oven over medium heat. Add the onion, season with salt and pepper, and cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the rice and stir together with the onions until the onions are beginning to brown, about 2 minutes. Add the white wine and cook until it evaporates (doesn't take very long). Add 2 cups broth and reduce the heat just slightly to a brisk simmer. Cook for 5 to 6 minutes, stirring well every minute or so. When the broth is absorbed, add another 1 cup of broth and continue to cook for another 5 minutes. Stir in the last cup of broth and cook for another 5 minutes, until the rice is cooked, but the grains are still firm. Taste and adjust the seasoning, adding another splash of broth if necessary. Turn off the heat.

4. While the rice is cooking, brown sausage in a large frying pan over medium heat, breaking up with a wooden spoon as it cooks. When the sausage is browned, add the butter, garlic and sage and let sizzle without browning, about 1 minute. Add the roasted parsnips and chopped greens, season lightly with salt and pepper, and stir to coat and heat through, about 2 minutes more.

5. Gently fold the cooked sausage and vegetables into the rice with the parmesan cheese and serve.

Spinach-Fennel Salad with Honey-Lemon Dressing

By A. Huddleston

(serves four)

5 oz. baby spinach, washed

1/2 fennel bulb, thinly sliced

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 tsp honey

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

1. Combine spinach and fennel in a salad bowl.

2. Whisk together remaining ingredients and toss with vegetables.

Astoria Salad

Waldorf salad dates back to the late 19th century and was named for New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel where it was created. For this version, I wanted to update the dish to be both lighter and more satisfying as an entrée.

I made a couple of key substitutions. First, I swapped out the walnuts for pecans, toasted to bring out their flavor. And I replaced the mayonnaise with walnut oil, which when mixed with balsamic vinegar and mustard sort of tastes like mayo oddly. With sauteed chicken, this makes a satisfying salad dinner.

Astoria Salad
By A. Huddleston
(serves two as a main course)

2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
2 tbsp. flour
seasoned salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
3/4 lb. chicken cutlets
1/3 cup pecans, coarsely chopped
2-3 stalks of celery with leaves attached
1 honeycrisp apple, cored and cut to 1/2-inch cubes
2-3 cups torn salad greens (I've used green leaf, arugula or both, whatever your preference)
1/4 cup golden raisins
2 tbsp. walnut oil
1/2 tbsp. balsamic vinegar
1/2 tsp. Dijon mustard
ground sea salt and black pepper to taste

1. Heat olive oil over medium heat in a 10-inch stainless steel frying pan. Combine flour, seasoned salt and pepper on a small plate. Pat chicken dry with paper towels and dredge in flour mixture. Add to pan when the oil is hot (chicken should sizzle). Saute chicken until browned on both sides, about 5 minutes per side. Set aside to cool. Once cooled, cut into 1/2-inch pieces.

2. Heat a small (8-inch) frying pan over medium-low heat. Add pecans to pan and heat, tossing occasionally until lightly browned and fragrant (be careful not to burn). Set aside to cool.

3. Whisk together walnut oil, balsamic vinegar, mustard and salt and pepper (to taste) until well combined as a vinaigrette (I use a 1-cup Pyrex glass measuring cup and about 70 strokes with a fork).

4. Cut leaves off celery stalks, chop leaves and set aside as a garnish. Remove any bad parts of the celery, and chop stalks to 1/4-inch pieces. In a large salad bowl, combine chopped celery stalks, cubed apple, salad greens, raisins, chicken and pecans. Toss with vinaigrette. Serve on plates topped with chopped celery leaves.