Endless Simmer - A Food Blog

I first discovered halloumi cheese in South Africa last year. A trendy SA chain called News Cafe serves an avocado salad with fried halloumi, grilled brinjal and peppadews. Since I didn’t know what any of those things were, I had to try it. I ended up making several return trips for this amazing fried cheese.

For the record, brinjal is just eggplant, and peppadew is a spicy red pepper native to South Africa. But that’s beside the point, because halloumi was the real discovery. This super-salty, extra-firm-but-slimy goat/sheep’s milk cheese is actually from Cyprus, and if you try to say otherwise, the Halloumi Police will get you.

I’m not sure why it’s so prevalent in South Africa, but I have never noticed it stateside before, so when I spied it at the co-op last week, I jumped for it.

In taste, it’s probably most similar to a queso blanco, and like that Mexican cheese, it’s most exciting because it can be fried or grilled. A few recipes around the web recommend dipping it in flour, but I just tried it straight up and got this nice golden brown after frying thin slices for about a minute each side in extra virgin. The outside is a crisp golden brown and the inside is just a tad melty.

Since I didn’t have any peppadews lying around, I made my own version of the salad, with roasted red peppers, cucumbers, and of course, pine nuts.

*This post is tagged both Greek and Middle Eastern for redundancy’s sake, not as an attempt to fuel any cheese-related territorial conflicts.

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So I have to admit, I’ve been less of a crazy chef since moving back home to New York. When not surrounded by 10 like-minded culinarians living on the same block, I’m a lot less likely to come up with insanity like hot dog sushi. If I’m just cooking for myself, I often end up preparing a non-blog-worthy sandwich, salad or stir-fry. Which kind of sucks, because, you know, I have a food blog.

But this week, I finally got around to watching the Top Chef Holiday Special on DVR. In addition to such scenes as Padma playing Dirty Santa (not nearly as exciting as it sounds), it got me right back into the mood to be running around my kitchen, hastily throwing random ingredients together in attempts to semi-invent something semi-fancy. Remembering I had some awesome leftovers like duck bacon in the freezer, I put together this quickfire dinner.

If I was Rachel Ray, I’d call it a gourmet 30-minute meal. But then I would have to tell you dumbass things like its OK to substitute baloney for prosciutto, so let’s just call it a tortellini explosion.

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Since I was down in D.C. a few weeks ago, I got to partake in dadgansie’s endless bounty of green tomatoes. Mmmm.

This savory tart (torte?) was inspired by gansie’s tomato bake. Of course, I had to add in the three p’s that rule my life: pine nuts, pastry and parm. (sorry Phyllo, I went with the easier puff pastry this time, and besides, your p. is tenuous given its silence.)

Now, even though this is a tart, I didn’t want the tomatoes to be tart, so I caramelized them with brown sugar (I got some inspiration/instruction from Gary Rhodes). This worked well in the deliciousness department, although it unfortunately left dadgansie’s beautiful greens a less-than-appetizing brown. I covered my tracks by throwing on some red (non-caramelized) tomatoes and covering the tart with enough pine and parm to drown a cat.

Recipe after the j.

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- In a case of two wrongs definitely making a very wrong, now available: Bud Light with Clamato. [via the Champagne of Blogs]

- Basilcello! Now that’s more like it. Throw in some pine nuts and I’m sold.

- Who knew Dr. Pepper was supposed to be heated before serving? I’m ’bout to try that one of these cold winter nights. Maybe with some Dr. Schnapps mixed in. [via SoGood]

Photo: Cruft

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My brother made this cranberry pie for t-day, and I am officially of the new-found belief that cranberries should be enjoyed year-round. This delicious dessert is tart and sweet, with not even a passing resemblance to that canned cranberry stuff that always finds its way to the corner of the t-day table.

Cape Cod Cranberry “Linzer” Pie in Classic Home Desserts by Richard Sax pg 512-513

2 crust pie - 9 inch
1 orange
1 1/4 c. sugar
2 c. fresh or frozen cranberries washed and picked over
1 1/2 c. sweet apples or pears peeled, cored and cut into 1/2 in. diced
1 TBSP minced crystallized ginger
1/4 raisins golden or regular
Milk and cinnamon sugar for glaze

Preheat oven to 375

Remove the zest from the orange in strips with a vegetable peeler and
squeeze the juice from the orange. Place zest in a food processor with 1/2
c. of the sugar. Process until zest is finely chopped. Add about 1 c. of the
cranberries and pulse until the berries are coarsely chopped. Transfer the
mixture to a bowl and stir in remaining 1 c. whole cranberries, 3/4 sugar,
orange juice, apples or pears, ginger, and raisins.

You can lattice the top crust or leave it whole, just add slits in the top
for air to get out. Lightly brush the top crust with milk and sprinkle a
little of the cinnamon sugar over that.

Cook about 1 hour or until the crust is golden and filling is bubbly

Of course, we can’t just leave you with instructions to use a store-bought pie crust - after the jump, a recipe my sister-in-law uses for a perfect, flaky pie crust. Plus, a bonus pie recipe.

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With no Top Chef to watch or blog about this week, I found myself with some free time, so I figured, why not? I’ll cook something. I mean, I do have a food blog after all.

So I went to the local butcher Saturday and picked myself out some tasty-looking lamb shoulder chops. I wanted to get a little crazy (obv) but since my experience with lamb is rather young (haha) I decided to keep the cooking part simple and got creative with the after-saucing.

My inspiration here was E-double’s fantastic Chimichurri sauce that she puts on her steaks. I subbed in spinach for the parsley, and because it’s me, added some pine nuts. In a way, this is more of a pesto than a chimichurri, but in reality, it’s neither. Whatever you call it, this baby was delicious, and the recipe is after the jump.

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I’ve been wanting to make moussaka since way back at Greekfest, but have been avoiding it due to the unending sauna-like weather of the past few months.

Now, I’m not tryin to say I eat only light and airy foods all summer (see: fetuccini alfredo at the beach), but it just hasn’t seemed right to make this very meat-y, very chees-ey warming dish in this kind of heat.

Still, I absolutely love the idea of layering meat with eggplant - it’s just not fair that vegetarians get to have all the eggplant-fun - us meatlovers should be able to get in on the act too.

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First off, yes I know it is a faux pax to include back-to-back posts about green. But hey, we like green around here.

My suburban brother stopped by this week with about 8 gardens worth of fresh vegetables. After polishing off the tomatoes by making several batches of Edouble’s salsa, I turned my attention to the cucumbers.

This green gazpacho is an original taste, mostly inspired by my current sweet-and-spicy fixation. I know Gansie is still not on board with last year’s trend of fruits intermingling with veggies, and I admit the flava profile here is a bit crazy, but it is a work in progress, albeit already a tasty one. Recipe after the j.

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Perhaps no single food has been more commonized by the foodie crazy than pesto. Once the purview of gourmet Italian chefs, now everyone from Walla Walla to Peoria is hitting the green.

But there’s still some old world skill necessary to make Pesto right. For an Irish-New Yorker, my mom can make a pesto as mean as any Sicilian grandma. I highlighted the ingredients above to draw attention to her two simple rules that many of these nuevo pesto chefs choose to ignore, at their own peril:

1- Only fresh basil. Bypass that crud they have in plastic containers at the grocery. Come fresh or don’t come at all. My mom won’t even make pesto until the summertime, when the best crop comes out.

2- Pine (pignoli) nuts are key. Don’t listen to anyone who says otherwise. Sure, I’ve had some decent “pesto” made with walnuts or no nuts at all, but that’s not pesto, it’s basil sauce.

The result is a rich, creamy concoction that I could eat with a spoon, although I try to resist the temptation to do so.

Mama Spiegel’s full recipe after the jump.

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