Every year, I seem to make another variation on cranberry sauce. There have been versions with ginger, apple, port wine and this one, with Rosemary and White Balsamic. It’s a great little combination, though you really have to like rosemary as it is pretty powerful as far as herbs go. It will go great with your turkey dinner though. Tick tock, almost Thanksgiving!
Cauliflower is really underrated, in my opinion. A lot of people think it is bland or flavorless. The white color doesn’t exactly do it any favors either. But you can really use it as anything from a base to a soup to “rice” to in this case, a “steak”. It’s really hearty, flavorful with the nutty brown butter and can truly be used as a substitute for a real steak. I’d serve this to a vegetarian friend, wouldn’t you?
Getting to be BBQ season here in the Northeast and it is the Fourth of July coming up so I thought that I would share one of my “Go To” side dishes. This pasta salad has to be one of the fastest ever to put together and is very neutral — no exotic flavors this time. I went for a little picnic out on one of the islands in Boston Harbor and snacked on this salad on the rocks.
Hollandaise. That lovely creamy buttery addition used to perfect Eggs Benedict, place over white fish or summer veggies. It is pure magic if done correctly, and can be a disastrous mess if it splits on you. This is my technique for making the magic.
And why am I showing you a picture of hollandaise with asparagus, a fried duck egg and serrano ham? Well, in the month of May, Germans are absolutely crazy about their asparagus (the white kind, though white is awful in my parts of the world, as it is old, woody and generally horrible; this lovely green stuff is from the local farmers market and was harvested about 36 hours ago). Holladaise is wonderful with this dish.