Archives for April 2010

Sea Scallops with Puy Lentils and Fennel Cream

April 28, 2010 By Steve Dunn 17 Comments

After a multi-month hiatus from contributing recipes to Food52, I am pleased to say that I am back in the saddle and getting reacquainted with some of the great people who are active members of the community….. I hadn’t realized how much I missed being part of the scene there. This recipe is one that I whipped up last week to hop back into the game, the recipe contest was for “Best Scallops”. It wasn’t chosen as a finalist, but was tagged as an “editor’s pick” which is always a nice acknowledgment.

It is my spin on a restaurant dish I had a few years back that paired scallops with lentils, an apple cider reduction, and a mascarpone cream…it was delicious. I’ve always loved earthy flavors with my scallops, and particularly like Puy lentils which have such a lovely bite to them. The smoky bacon and the sharp mustard are a nice play against the sweetness of the scallops, and as for the fennel cream….what doesn’t taste better with a little fennel cream?

Green Apple and Basil Sorbet

April 25, 2010 By Steve Dunn 9 Comments

We made this little treat a few weeks back in an effort to use up some apple purée that I had stored in the freezer. I had bought some raspberry purée some months ago to use in a really delicious strawberry-raspberry jam that we make for holiday gift-baskets. For years, I used fresh raspberries for my jam, but the process of mashing them, and then pressing the purée through a tight sieve to strain out the seeds really put me in a bad way….it just took waaaaaay too long.

Of course, like any good specialty foods shopper, once I found a reliable source for fruit purées, I couldn’t help but order a few more tubs in various flavors. I mean, I was sure to be able to find some creative use for some passion fruit purée, or maybe green apple…. oh yeah, and how about blood orange?

The stuff was like crack to me, I couldn’t stop myself.

Jamie Oliver’s Chicken Korma

April 22, 2010 By Steve Dunn 14 Comments

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again….I’m a big fan of Jaime Oliver. I like his food philosophy, I like his recipes, I like his no-nonsense approach to getting things done in the kitchen, I like the message he’s bringing to the world, and the campaign he’s built to not only get families eating healthier food, but to get better food into the schools for our kids.People ask me all the time, “if you could be any chef on the planet who would it be?”. As you might guess, the normal superstar suspects all come to mind….. let’s see there’s Robuchon, Keller, Ducasse, Vongerichten, Boulud, Ripert, Blumenthal, and Adria, just to name a few. But to be honest, if I could click my heals together today and change myself into any chef currently working, I’d want to be Oliver. I mean, it would be very cool to be any of the aforementioned chefs, working at the very peak of gastronomy, but I don’t think there is any chef working so hard to bring better food and cooking skills to average families and kids than Oliver, and how cool and important is that!

Baked Polenta with Spinach and Chicken-Apple Sausage

April 18, 2010 By Steve Dunn 14 Comments

This is a dish that Boris and I whipped up the other night, and I must say that for such a simple and quick preparation, it is REALLY good. I found this recipe in Whole Foods Market’s Spring Magazine, a copy of which my wife and I received upon attending last week’s “Share Our Strength’s” – “Taste of The Nation” fund raising event in Boston.

A quick word about Share Our Strength. They are a national organization that raises money through their pioneering culinary events (Share Our Strength’s Taste of the Nation, Great American Dine Out, A Tasteful Pursuit and Great American Bake Sale) and award grants to support successful organizations across the country that work to provide children and their families with the healthy food they need. Since their inception in 1984, they have raised over $265 million and provided support to more than 1,000 of the most effective hunger-relief organizations around the globe. They also provide on-the-ground cooking and nutritional training to at-risk families through their “Operation Front Line” program, and I will be starting work with them shortly as a volunteer chef instructor for some of their Boston based classes. I’m very excited to be getting involved with such a terrific organization, and I’ll certainly be sharing more about my work with them in later posts.

But for now, let’s get back to this polenta dish.

Quinoa Tabbouleh

April 15, 2010 By Steve Dunn 4 Comments

I must admit that I felt a little like Heidi Swanson the other day when working up this recipe. No, it wasn’t ’cause of how I looked in the stylish skirt I was wearing ;-), but rather this quinoa and veggie treat is exactly the kind of thing that Heidi presents so beautifully on her blog, 101 Cookbooks every week.

Growing up in Vermont, with an Italian mother manning the stove, I didn’t grow up eating anything quite so exotic as middle-eastern cooking. In fact, it wasn’t until I married my wife, who is of Lebanese descent, that I was finally exposed to more than just the very basics of middle-eastern cuisine. Since then, I have come to love not just the ubiquitous hommus, falafel, and baba ghannouj, but also dishes like fatayer, kibbe and tabbouleh.

"Three Cities of Spain" Cheesecake

April 12, 2010 By Steve Dunn 7 Comments

It is amazing what we food bloggers have to do sometimes to track down a top-notch recipe for our readers. As you may have guessed from the title of this post, this one took a lot of travel and research to pull together for you guys. I'll have you know that I just landed back from a trip to….can you guess? Yeah, three cities in Spain (Barcelona, Madrid and Seville to be exact), where I traveled to uncover the secret recipe for this deliciously light and creamy cheesecake.

What…..you don't believe me? You doubt my spare-no-expense commitment to scouring the world for only the very best recipes to share with you all? Boo….you make sad.

Ming Tsai’s Tea Rubbed Salmon

April 8, 2010 By Steve Dunn 24 Comments

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It’s confession time, my friends.

OK….are you ready?

I really don’t care for salmon.

These are words of a heretic, I know.

Of all the fish in the sea, most folks go on and on about the wonders of salmon, but to me, its just a little too….how shall I say this…..FISHY.

Whatever taste buds I have in my mouth that are responsible for tasting “fishy” things must have been inherited from my Dad, who won’t eat even a molecule of fish unless you put a gun to his head. My Mom on the other hand, resides at the other end of the spectrum and believes anything milder than mackerel, bluefish, or bagna cauda is just plain tasteless and boring. I have to say that I’ve got the “fishy” thing kinda bad, because just the thought of smelling mackerel on the grill makes my stomach go all queasy.

"Olives" Roasted Cauliflower with Honey and Spices

April 4, 2010 By Steve Dunn 14 Comments

Until very recently, whenever I’d pass the cauliflower display in my local market, I’d mumble to myself….”what the #$%^ do people do with cauliflower anyway?” I mean, I’m a cook with fairly well rounded tastes, comfortable cooking and eating just about anything, but for some reason, I have avoided, ignored, and dismissed cauliflower for years. It could be that I never remember having it as a kid, it just wasn’t a part of my mom’s cooking routine, and therefore I never developed a taste for it when I was young. It could be that the few times I’ve had it served to me and actually liked it, it was either deep fried, or drowning in a cheese sauce, and as much as I’m a fan of cheese and ANYTHING fried, to me, that whole route seems to defeat the purpose of eating vegetables in the first place.

Archives for April 2010

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