Adam D. Roberts's Blog, page 34

Peter Dale’s Pecan Muhummara

[Our final Sauce Week post comes to us from Chef Peter Dale, of The National in Athens, Georgia. Take it away, Peter!]

I first had this dish in Jordan several years ago, and it was served as a dip with hummus. You can certainly do that, but I like using it as a sauce. It works particularly well with lamb, but would also be great with chicken and a meaty fish like swordfish.

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Amanda Cohen’s Grapefruit Beurre Blanc

[Dirt Candy's Amanda Cohen isn't just one of the best chefs going today, she's also a fantastic writer. Here's her take on a sauce you met earlier this week, only with her unique twist. Take it away, Amanda!]

It’s not one of French cuisine’s mother sauces, nor is it a “daughter” sauce, but it is my favorite sauce and it was actually invented by a woman (Clémence Lefeuvre) so that already puts it one up on fussy old Escoffier. It’s beurre blanc (white butter) sauce and it will rock your world.

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Making Your Own Hot Sauce Will Change Your Life

[My friend, filmmaker Matt Morris, offers up his own take on hot sauce, "an easier one" he points out after reading the post below this. Take it away, Matt!]

I recently moved to the Napa Valley, a land of such abundance that it’s almost impossible to visit a friend without leaving with large sacks of produce, dozens of backyard eggs, and cases of wine in tow.

In order to keep this food from going to waste, you must find ways to preserve, pickle, and can. Most people who regularly cook never think to make their own condiments, which isn’t that difficult and always significantly tastier than store bought. But which condiment stands above them all?

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Trinidad Harvest Hot Sauce

[When I wrote my cookbook, I had the pleasure of meeting and cooking with Tim Artz, the self-described "Sultan of Scratch" who grows and cooks almost everything that he eats. One of his signature specialties is hot sauce; and here, in this post, he describes his love for the stuff and offers up an original recipe. Take it away, Tim!]

I love hot and spicy foods. I crave bold and lively flavors. Not to say that I don’t care for mild, savory and nuanced flavor, but given a choice, I would opt for hot.

I never experienced any hot foods as a kid growing up. Maybe the hottest thing I ever had was some red pepper flakes sprinkled on a slice of pizza or some cherry peppers on a hoagie. I remember all of my first truly zesty bites: hot mustard on an egg roll in a Chinese restaurant, Indian curry when the first Indian restaurant opened in my home town in Pennsylvania, and the cayenne peppers my dad decided to start growing in his garden while I was a university student.

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Scallops and Cauliflower with Caper-Raisin Sauce

Not to pat myself on the back too eagerly, but it takes a certain talent to adapt a fancy restaurant dish into something that you’d really want to eat at home. Years ago, when I was lucky enough to eat at Jean-Georges, I ate one of his more famous dishes: a thin sliver of cauliflower balanced on a perfectly seared scallop sitting in a pool of a delightfully exotic caper raisin sauce. That sauce was unforgettable: both sweet and briny and endlessly fascinating. I knew I had to make it for Sauce Week, but I didn’t want to do anything overly fussy with the cauliflower and scallops. What I ended up making is maybe one of the best weeknight dinners I’ve ever made, and the sauce is so easy, you won’t believe your eyes.

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Pesto By Hand

[One of my oldest friends, Alex Dickson, bravely agreed to tackle one of the hardest Sauce Week challenges: pesto by hand. By hand! Here's her account of how it all went down. Take it away, Alex!]

The ingredients for a basil pesto sauce are simple but Adam challenged me to do this pesto old school Italian style, so the process was what made me nervous.

Nervous about making pesto? Wow, Alex, that sounds like something that’s really worth getting anxious about. Your life must be challenging. Stop judging me, Reader! I wanted this pesto to be good because I was making it for my parents, and cooking something for my father that he really likes is one of my favorite things.

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Pesto Trapanese

[My friend Dara Bratt--an award-winning filmmaker and unabashed bon vivant--positively pounced when I mentioned "Sauce Week" and here's her delightful contribution. Take it away, Dara!]

Recently, I had a girls’ night at a fairly new restaurant in Brooklyn called “Rucola”. The conversation was great, and the food equally impressive, the standout dish being the pasta, which my friend ordered; “Garganelli – Tomatoes – almond pesto, cherry tomatoes, zucchini.”

It was so light that the impact of flavor was shockingly impressive. A pesto with almonds at the core instead of pine nuts?! Cheaper? Healthier? Sold!

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Sauce Week: What’s Your Favorite Sauce Recipe?

Hey folks! Are you having a good Sauce Week? There are still plenty of posts coming–two pesto posts, two hot sauce posts, two more chef posts and a post about Jean-Georges’ caper raisin sauce (which I served on top of scallops and cauliflower, yum)–but in the meantime, I’d like to know: What’s YOUR favorite sauce recipe? Share it in the comments and, who knows, maybe I’ll make one of them for next year’s Sauce Week. Stay saucy.

Gina DePalma’s Fonduta

[One of my favorite people in the food world--actually, in the world period--is the brilliant writer/chef/pastry chef Gina DePalma, author of Dolce Italiano and former pastry chef at Babbo. If you're not following her on Twitter or reading her blog, you really should; it's excellent. And here she is with a sauce that'll make all of you cheese-lovers swoon. Take it away, Gina!]

When Adam approached me about making a contribution to his Sauce Week, it didn’t take long for fonduta to spring up in my head as an ideal candidate. A classic recipe from Italy’s Northwestern region of Piemonte, fonduta isn’t exactly a sauce, but more of dish itself, yet it has all the qualities of a great sauce – it naps and slicks seductively, adds richness and flavor, and is so darn good it is hard not to pour it directly down your throat.

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Lemon-Caper Beurre Blanc Sauce (Or: Don’t Tell Your Doctor)

[Sometimes I think that Craig's dad, Steve Johnson, writes more popular posts than I do when he's at the helm of my site. Here he is, joining the Sauce Week fray, with a Lemon-Caper Beurre Blanc that I hope he makes for me the next time I visit Bellingham. Take it away, Steve!]

Several years ago, when I was developing a real interest in home cooking, my friend and I took an evening cooking class sponsored by our local community college. The recipes and instruction were from Joe Merkling, then chef of the restaurant at the Bellwether Hotel in Bellingham. The dishes he demonstrated that evening included Panko-crusted chicken breasts with a butter sauce. The sauce we made was a classic French beurre blanc (white butter), enhanced with lemon juice, capers and parsley. It was so delicious, so decadent and so rich that when Adam Roberts, The Amateur Gourmet, invited me to do a post during “Sauce Week”, I jumped at the chance. What a perfect excuse to make a sauce that uses a whole cup of butter, heavy cream and herbs!

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