Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Quince Butter, Bergamot Peel

June Taylor products are hot, hot, hot. Sizzling hot.

Seems everywhere I turn, I’m seeing them in a magazine, on a newsflash, or on my doorstep.

I can explain that last one. I ordered three of JT’s products because, as it has been well documented here and there, I can’t seem to stay away from gourmet items.

I ordered Quince Butter ($14), Candied Bergamot Peel ($12) and Rose Geranium Syrup ($18) after spotting June Taylor’s products in the Food 52 Shop (both a hallowed and dangerous place for people like me.)

I wanted to make something using all three products, but after tasting each of them, I realized that was too ambitious, even for me.

Sometimes chefs have the tendency to wrap too many flavors together, when really, less is more.

So I settled on the quince butter and the bergamot, combined with sweet potatoes. I’ll save the syrup for another post. It needs something simple to let its unique flavor shine through.

Roasting sweet potatoes is one of the easiest preparations, so that’s where I started. I wanted to make a sauce from the quince butter and then top the mixture with the bergamot peel.

Pretty straightforward. Simply peel the sweet potatoes, and cut them into 1-inch rounds.

Layer them in a buttered baking dish, preferably one that can go from oven to table, like this pretty Emile Henry.

The bergamot orange (which is yellow in color, not orange) is small, very acidic, and used mainly for its essential oil (in the peel) in everything from perfume to confections to tea — Earl Grey tea, specifically.

I steeped 1 bag of Earl Grey in a small amount of water, making a strong tea, in essence, to enhance the sauce, thinking it would tie the quince butter and bergamot peel topping together.

The tea went into a small saucepan with the quince butter and some real butter. There is no butter in fruit butters coming from a jar. They’re called “butter” because the fruit is cooked down to a thick puree that can be spread, like soft butter.

Wanting to keep the flavors from becoming too muddled, I resisted the temptation to throw in a bunch of spices, although you certainly could. You could throw in some booze, too, and normally, I would have, but it was early and I wasn’t thinking straight, so I didn’t.

I did throw in a pinch of freshly grated nutmeg because, well, I couldn’t resist the urge completely.

The quince butter, tea and real butter boil together just long enough to thicken and meld together. I really should have added some brandy or Grand Marnier; what was I thinking? Instead, I tarted it up with a splash of apple cider vinegar.

The thickened fruit butter mixture is spread over the sweet potatoes and then the pan goes into the oven.

You should know that the sauce is sparten on purpose. You could increase the quantities a bit if you want lots of sauce after roasting, but again, I was showing restraint, still wanting the flavor of the sweet potatoes to come through.

I promise this need for restraint will pass.

While the mixture is bubbling away in the oven, I chopped the bergamot peel — finely — with a knife. I tried to use my mini-food processor, but I was only successful in knocking off the sugar coating. The peel resisted the blade. Guess I wasn’t the only one resisting today.

A chef’s knife and a little elbow grease soon made mincemeat out of the tough, fragrant peel.

To add a bit of texture, I chopped some toasted pecans to sprinkle on top along with the chopped bergamot.

Now the dish can go to the table, in its pretty baking dish, for everyone to ooh and ahh over. Visually appealing, yes, but for me, it’s the taste that deserves cooing.

From the earthy sweet potatoes to the tart quince butter to the unique taste of the bergamot, this dish brings a little sophistication and a lot of complex flavors from just a few, simple, expensive, gourmet products.

But you’re worth it, aren’t you?

Roasted Sweet Potatoes
with Quince Butter and Bergamot Peel

Serves 4 or 5

1 Earl Grey tea bag
1/3 cup boiling water

2/3 cup June Taylor Quince Butter
1 tablespoon butter (+ 1 teaspoon for buttering pan)
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
Pinch of nutmeg

2 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch rounds
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground white pepper
1/3 cup chopped toasted pecans
2 tablespoons finely chopped bergamot peel

Heat the oven to 375º F. Steep the Earl Grey tea in the 1/3 cup boiling water and set aside for 5 minutes. Discard tea bag and pour tea into a small saucepan with the quince butter, real butter, vinegar and pinch of nutmeg. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to a simmer. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring frequently.

Butter a large baking dish with a teaspoon of softened butter. Lay the sweet potatoes in a single layer, fitting in as many rounds as you can.

Pour the reduced quince butter mixture over the top and spread evenly with a spatula. Cover with foil and place in the oven. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until the potatoes are almost but not quite fork tender. Remove the foil and continue roasting for another 10 to 15 minutes, or until the potatoes are fork tender.

Remove from oven and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Now sprinkle with pecans and bergamot peel and serve.

NOTE: Let’s just say, for example, you don’t have June Taylor’s products on hand, but you like the idea of this dish. You can substitute the quince butter with apple butter, and the candied bergamot peel with regular candied orange peel.

Celeriac

Don’t panick. I haven’t gone rouge with all these healthy vegetable posts. I’ll do something decadent before the month’s over.

In the meantime, I present to you: celeriac (also called celery root, celery knob, or just plain old ugly vegetable).

It’s gnarly. Bad-to-the-bone. And… and… mild.

That’s right. Beneath the grisly skin is a pale, mottled muse. It tastes like a cross between mild celery and parsley, with a texture like a raw turnip.

Now, I’m not fond of turnips — raw or cooked — although I can choke down honey-glazed roasted turnips, especially if they’re scented with lavender. But that’s another post for another time.

The point is, don’t let the turnip texture turn you against celeriac, because it really is a delicate, delicious vegetable.

It takes some peeling to get that grisly skin off. Start by slicing off the top, and then slice off the bottom. That’s where you’ll find deep crevices that seem to never end.

Just keep slicing until all signs of grooves are gone.

You’ll get there. Now you can slice it however you want. You can even grate it. It depends on how you want to eat it.

You might want to slice them into rounds and broil or steam them.

You can eat them plain, or drizzled with a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Or, once cooked, you can turn them into a puree or a soup.

Or you might want to cut them into matchsticks (julienne cut) and toss them in a salad with apples, or stir fry them with carrots and mushrooms.

Or you might want to dice them, and mix them in a seafood salad, or chopped vegetable salad.

Celeriac is in season now (October through April).

It does turn brown (oxidation) after peeling, so keep it covered in acidulated water (water + a squeeze of lemon juice or splash of vinegar) until your ready to use it.

Looking for Recipes? Try these:

Celery Root Gratin from Leite’s Culinaria

Celery Root Salad from Simply Recipes

Celeriac, Pear and Stilton Soup from CD Kitchen

Do you have a recipe for celeriac? Leave a link in the comments to share.

5 Stocking Stuffers for Gourmet Cooks

What do you get the cook on your list who already has the perfectly appointed kitchen?

1. Leopard print baking cups from Sur La Table. $6.00.

Got a baker on your list? Give them these wild baking liners for their exotic muffins and cupcakes. Grrrrrrh….

2. Tortoise rimmed onion goggles from Chef Tools. $18.99.

Don’t laugh. They work and could be considered stylish…sort of…at least more stylish than my lime green rimmed ones.

3. Oval-shaped ice cream scoop from Globe Equipment Company. $15.67.

It’s how top restaurants scoop their perfectly shaped oval ice creams and sorbets.

4. Chocolate spatula with built-in thermometer from Chef’s Catalog. $18.95.

Serious chocolate makers know that tempering chocolate creates a uniform sheen and perfect snap. Tempering requires stirring heated chocolate to cool it to a precise temperature, which is different for each type of chocolate (dark, milk, white). The thermometer on this stirring spatula is labeled with that perfect temperature.

5. Burn Cream MD from Amazon.com. $23.96.

No cook worth his or her salt has ever escaped a burnt finger, palm or arm. This cream takes the sting away and helps with healing.

Happy shopping. Who knows, you might find something for yourself, too.

Cauliflower Puree

Do not adjust the color on your monitor. That cauliflower is indeed, that yellow. It’s called a “cheddar cauliflower.”

You’d think I wouldn’t care for cauliflower since it’s in the same family as Brussels sprouts. But so is kale, and I love kale.

I must like cauliflower. I keep writing about it.

I especially like this orangey-yellow cheddar cauliflower. Not because it tastes dramatically different than white cauliflower — it doesn’t. I like it because it’s colorful.

I decided to steam it, puree it, and pair it with sun-dried tomatoes and Parmesan. Cauliflower is bland by itself, so it needs strong flavors to perk it up.

I prefer steaming over boiling when making vegetable purees. Why?

The resulting puree is less watery. Boiled vegetables take on a lot more water than what’s naturally present in the vegetable. Steamed vegetables don’t.

A food processor won’t puree the mixture as smooth as a blender, but you’d need a lot more liquid than what I’m using here to get a blender (even a Vita-Mix) to puree this mixture.

If this was The French Laundry, we’d be pressing this puree through a tamis for an ultra-smooth puree.

Fortunately, it’s just Chef Gwen’s kitchen, and we’re not going to that much trouble. The food processor will do a good enough job.

Minced sun-dried tomatoes with fresh parsley and put a dollop on top. You could mix it right in, but it looks prettier as a garnish. Just because we’re not a top restaurant doesn’t mean we don’t want our food to look good, right?

Either way, it tastes way better than plain old steamed cauliflower. In fact, it tastes just like a fancy-schmancy restaurant side dish.

Pureed Cauliflower with Sun-Dried Tomatoes & Parmesan

Serves 4

1 head cauliflower
1/4 cup chicken or vegetable stock
1/4 cup grated Parmesan
2 or 3 tablespoons heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes, drained and minced
2 tablespoons chopped parsley

Cut the cauliflower into florets. Steam until tender, about 15-20 minutes.

Place florets in a food processor. Pour in stock and puree. Scrape down sides.

Sprinkle with Parmesan, drizzle with cream and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Puree again until smooth, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl once or twice.

Return puree to a pan and gently reheat over low heat until hot.

Taste and add more salt or pepper if desired.

Portion onto four plates and garnish with sun-dried tomatoes and parsley.

Mandarin Orange Dust

I am a sucker for anything gourmet. Unusual ingredients are a particular weakness (see bamboo rice.)

It all started with a tweet from a Seattle chef I admire and follow on Twitter, @ChefReinvented (Becky Selengut). She was catering a party for 60 and tweeted her menu, including this little gem:

Seared wild U.S. prawns with tangerine dust, New Mexico chiles and smoked paprika aioli.

Tangerine dust? All of a sudden, I’m fixated on getting my hands on some tangerine dust.

A quick glance around the kitchen and I spot a 5-pound box of  Cuties®. So they’re not tangerines, but I thought, why not?

For the record, tangerine is much sexier sounding than cutie.

The Cutie is a type of mandarin orange — a Californian clementine — as is the tangerine, the satsuma and the Dancy.

Cutie Dust just doesn’t have the same ring as Clementine Dust. Or Tangerine Dust for that matter.

The clementines need to be sliced whisper-thin, but after a few, painfully slow slices with my knife, I quickly figured out I had better things to do with my Sunday. I dug out the mandolin.

Technically it’s a Japanese Benriner, the only one I’ve found (sorry France and Germany) that slices food so thin you can see through it.

Adjusting the mandolin to cut as thin as possible, each clementine produced 10 or 12 slices, not counting the first couple of slices or the last little bit, as I stopped before I sliced my finger tips off.

Funny thing, this particular mandolin has the words “watch your fingers” printed in English and Japanese.

I’m guessing that the Japanese words say the same thing. They could say something entirely different, like “we only printed the English words ‘watch your fingers’ for the careless English-speaking people, but we know you, our slice-savvy Japanese customers, know when to stop.”

Or something like that.

I laid the slices in a single layer on a parchment-lined baking sheet and stuck them in a 200ºF. oven for about 3 hours.

If you don’t slice them as thin as I did, it might take a little longer. They should be brittle when they come out of the oven, but don’t let them get too brown or they’ll taste burnt.

At this point, they make a nice little potpourri garnish. Throw in a couple cinnamon sticks and call it a day.

But I was after the culinary profit of dust, so I crushed a handful and put them in a spice blender with a big pinch of sugar and small pinch of kosher salt.

Chef Becky had warned me that they might be bitter without cutting with a little something. This is especially true if using thicker skinned tangerines instead of thin-skinned clementines.

Several grinds later, a pretty powder:  clementine dust.

It looks like ground ginger, only brighter. The taste? Intense. Like an orange to the 10th degree. Exquisite.

Four clementines yielded 1/4 cup of powder, er, dust.

I’m thinking about making some more, stashing them into little spice tins to give to friends for Christmas and Hanukkah.

Dusting scallops with this angelic powder just before searing sounds like a fabulous idea. So does mixing it into a dry rub for ribs or maybe adding a teaspoon to a vinaigrette to punch up the flavor.

What do you think about adding a teaspoon or two to a pound cake or muffin batter? Or maybe sprinkling on top of ice cream, or folding a teaspoon into whipped cream?

The possibilities are endless…and flavorful and fragrant.

Cranberry Orange Compote

My cranberry sauce doesn’t come out of a can. (although it did for a number of years).

Now it comes with a little booze (shhh!) Just a little port and a splash of the most syrupy, orangey liqueur, Grand Marnier.

And some brown sugar. (or white sugar, really, it doesn’t matter).

Bring the berries, port and sugar to a boil. (Save the Grand Marnier for later.)

While the berries are coming to a boil, chop a quarter of an orange, peel and all. Really fine.

Really, really fine.

The orange makes the compote thicken. I’ve see recipes calling for even more orange but a quarter seems to be the right balance. Well, that and the Grand Marnier.

After the compote thickens, take it off the heat and add dried cherries. Or dried cranberries. Or dried chopped figs. Or dried fill-in-the-blank fruit.

And throw in some toasted walnuts. But don’t add them until you’re ready to serve it so they stay crunchy.

You can just sprinkle them on top if you like. Or mix them in. Your call.

Serve it in a pretty bowl. Or an ugly one, if that’s what your mother-in-law gave you and she’s coming to dinner.

Cranberry Orange Compote

Makes 3 cups

1 (12-ounce) package of fresh or frozen cranberries
1 cup dark brown sugar (or light brown, or white, we don’t discriminate)
1/2 cup ruby Port wine
1/4 large navel orange, finely chopped
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup dried cherries, or cranberries or other dried fruit
1 generous tablespoon Grand Marnier
1/2 cup chopped, toasted walnuts or pecans

Stir cranberries, sugar and Port together in a heavy saucepan and place over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil. Stir in chopped orange, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt and reduce heat to a simmer.

Simmer until cranberries burst and mixture thickens, about 12 minutes.

Remove from heat and stir in dried fruit. Cool to room temperature. Stir in nuts just before serving.

Christmas Kale Chopped Salad

It’s not even Thanksgiving and here I am wrapping up a Christmas present for you. It’s called Christmas because it’s red and green, and bejeweled with seasonal treats like oranges, walnuts and pomegranates.

The fact that’s it’s healthy is purely by accident, I swear. I just thought about the flavors of the season. That’s why there’s port-soaked cranberries, juicy orange bits, crunchy jicama and bright kale. OK, jicama might not be the first holiday ingredient you think of, but it’s a wonderful addition, trust me.

I wanted another crunchy element, so I toasted some walnuts, another a holiday treat — or am I the only one who got oranges and walnuts in her Christmas stocking? (Neither were as treasured as the book of LifeSavers.)

A traditional chopped salad is sometimes presented in rows of ingredients, with the dressing served on the side.

But, being the control freak that I am, I like to reign over how much dressing goes on the salad (do you really want to leave this crucial detail up to your guests? What if they don’t have a clue about how much is enough? Or they’re too polite to use as much as they should, thinking less is more?)

To avoid all that pressure, I toss it myself. And I sprinkle a few pomegranate seeds on top to make it extra holiday-ish. I love this salad. Even if it is good for me.

Christmas Kale Chopped Salad

How to describe the fresh, vibrant taste of this salad? Fantastic! The fresh ground cardamom is a pleasant, exotic surprise. I love the crunchy textures, the tart-but-sweet cranberries and pomegranate seeds. In a word? Christmasy.

Serves 6

1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup ruby port (or apple juice)

Dressing:

Zest from 2 medium navel oranges
Juice from those 2 oranges after the sections have been removed
1-1/2 tablespoons champagne vinegar
2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint
1 tablespoon agave nectar or honey
3/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Salad:

1 bunch Tuscan kale, washed, trimmed and chopped
Orange sections left over from dressing
1 cup of 1/2-inch cubed jicama
1/2 cup toasted, chopped walnuts
1/3 cup pomegranate seeds

Stir the cranberries and port together in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Bring just to a boil and turn off the heat. Steep the cranberries while you make the dressing.

After zesting and removing the sections from the oranges, squeeze the juice from the pulp into a small bowl. Whisk in the vinegar, mint, agave nectar (or honey), cardamom, salt and pepper. Whisk in the olive oil. Set aside while you prepare the salad.

Place the chopped kale in a large salad bowl. Cut the orange sections into bite size pieces and add to the kale. Add the jicama and walnuts. Drain the steeped cranberries and add them to the salad bowl. Drizzle with the dressing and toss. Divide salad between six salad plates. Sprinkle with pomegranate seeds and serve.

Tuscan Kale

Tuscan… Cavolo Nero… Dinosaur… Laciniato. These all are names I’ve seen — in grocery stores, farmers markets and cookbooks — for the blackish-green, rough, wrinkly kale.

It’s easy to see why it’s called Dinosaur, since the leaves are roughly textured, but this kale defies it’s rugged appearance. It is actually quite tender. Not as tender as Swiss chard or spinach, but it is more tender than say, mustard greens. And, it doesn’t have the grassy taste of some greens.

Because it’s tender — and doesn’t taste like grass — it’s a great green to eat raw, even though you can cook with it. In the past year, I’ve seen chopped kale salads appear on several restaurant menus, including Phoenix’s Gallo Blanco, as ensalada cortada. Gallo Blanco mixes chopped kale with other shredded cabbages, Manchego cheese, avocado and crunchy corn nuts and dehydrated peas.

Like all greens, Tuscan kale should be thoroughly washed and dried. Cut the tough stems out. Roll the leaves into a long cigar shape and slice crosswise into ribbons (you might remember this is the chiffonade technique). Now your kale is ready for whatever you chose to make.

For chopped salads, cut the ribbons into smaller pieces. For adding to stews or pastas, you can just use the ribbons without further cutting.

Tuscan kale is a blank canvas. You can put any flavor spin on it you want: Mexican, Asian or Italian. Traditionally, since it is an Italian green, it’s paired with Italian flavors, like white beans, pancetta, pine nuts and balsamic vinegar.

Later this week, I’ll have a recipe for you: a Christmas Kale Chopped Salad, using some of the season’s best ingredients.

In the meantime, here are a couple of recipes for cooking with Tuscan Kale:

• Mediterranean expert Paula Wolfert’s Sautéed Tuscan Kale with Garlicky White Beans

• The Foodinista Blog: Tuscan Kale Chips

Got a Tuscan kale recipe, too? Leave a link in the comments.

Fresh Ground Cardamom

Two reasons why you shouldn’t buy pre-ground cardamom:

1) It’s expensive

2) It has a shelf life shorter than Bruce Willis’s singing career

Granted, it’s a pain to grind your own, but the payoff is in the taste — and the aroma.

Grind only as much as you need for your recipe. A tablespoon of pods should yield two teaspoons of ground cardamom, give or take.

I know what you’re thinking, and no, you can’t just grind the whole pod. Unless, of course, you’re the type that doesn’t peel ginger before grating either.

But really, who am I to judge? I grew up eating Frito Pie.

Toast the cardamom pods in a dry skillet over medium heat for 2 or 3 minutes, shaking the pan occasionally, if you really want to intensify the flavor.

Place the cardamom pods in a mortar (or just put them on a cutting board) and smash with a pestle to crack open the pods.

Spread the cracked pods out, so you can pick out the shells and discard. Don’t drive yourself to drinking by trying to get every last little shard of shell. This is good enough.

The seeds are rock hard, so instead of putting them back into the mortar, I put them in my spice grinder (just an old Krups coffee grinder I retired from coffee grinding and use only to grind spices now).

Whirl the seeds in the grinder for 30 seconds or so, just until you have a fine powder.

Remove the lid of the grinder and watch everyone within 20 feet swoon with ecstasy. Fresh ground cardamom is the most fragrant spice ever, and it has been known to make me weep with joy.

Please don’t skip over recipes that call for cardamom, thinking it’s too expensive. I bought a 3-1/2 ounce bag of green cardamom pods at an Indian grocery for $2.29. The pods will last for at least a year, maybe longer.

As tempting as it might be to grind a bunch at once — don’t. That defeats the purpose.

Besides, don’t you want to watch everyone fall to the floor when you lift the lid off the spice grinder? That only happens when you grind your cardamon seeds fresh from the pod.

More information about Cardamom:

cardamomspice.com

Some recipes sites that feature Cardamom:

cdkitchen

simplyrecipes

savorysweetlife

If you have a recipe that calls for cardamom, please share — just leave a link in the comments.

How to Seed a Pomegranate

Pomegranates are much tougher to spell than to peel and seed.

How do you get from this gorgeous, tough skinned orb with a trumpet shaped stem to a plate of sparkling rubies that burst sweet tart juice in the most meager of drops?

First slice off a 1/4 inch from the top and bottom.

(This sounds familiar, doesn’t it? It’s not too different from supreming an orange, up to this point, which is why I wrote that post first. Or that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)

Next, score the pomegranate five or six times, from the top to the bottom. I score in between the seed clusters. To score, you slice just through the skin — no further, from top to bottom.

Peel back the skin, and break the pomegranate into sections.

It’s not a bad idea to have a couple paper towels handy to wipe up the magenta juice that splatters here and there.

Drop the sections into a large bowl of cold water, and gently start massaging them between your fingers. The seeds will fall to the bottom of the bowl, while the pithy membranes float to the top.

Scoop off the floating pith. Might want to swish your hands around a few times in the seeds, just to coax a few more clinging pith skins to give it up and float to the surface.

Finally, strain the seeds in a colander. Now they’re ready to use anyway you see fit — and they will keep in the refrigerator for a week or two.

Garnish salads, desserts (lovely on bread pudding or pumpkin cheesecake) or even on guacamole.

Pomegranates are in season between late October and early February, but peak season is now.

I picked one up for $2 at a local grocery store, and saw a package of fresh peeled seeds for — gulp — $6, which is one reason why I seed them myself.

The other reason is purely nonsensical. I just like the way they feel in my hands.