Bruschetta

I feel as if I start many of my posts this way, that is by saying this is how Americans conceive a specific type of thing.  Quick!  I say sushi you say_____________________! And many people, probably not the ones reading this blog, immediately associate "raw fish" as the definitive feature of sushi.  Sushi actually refers to the rice, not the fish.  Although, we have come to commonly appreciate one type of sushi in the West, primarily that associated with raw fish.  I feel as if we can do the same thing with bruschetta.  Bruschetta to many Americans means, "yummy bread with tomatoes, basil, and olive oil served on bread.  However, bruschetta actually translates as "roasted over coals" and in some parts of Italy its called fettunta which means "oiled slice".  For all intensive purposes bruschetta is generally a garlic toast that has been brushed with olive oil and toasted over coals.  However, I refuse to eat fresh tomatoes unless they are at the perfect peak of season.  All other times of year I eat canned San Marzano or sun-dried tomatoes.  Tip:  Cherry & grape tomatoes are often sweet year round and I will buy them if I need fresh tomatoes out of season.

My wife and I had some lovely new friends over for dinner last night and I offered to make Bruschetta and Vichyssoise for appetizers.  And by the way, Vichyssoise could be made by a five-year old, but that's a different post.  These friends happen to be one of my favorite yoga teachers and her husband and I remembered that she loves kale.  So I decided to invent one for her.  I also made another one out of apricot jam and a summer cheddar cheese which was also delicious, but that doesn't require a recipe.  Use apricot jam and a good mild white cheddar.  And it doesn't stop there think of using sun-dried tomato spread, various beans or lentils, arugula salads, prosciutto, etc.  Here is the recipe for Kat's Kale Bruschetta:

• 1 lg. bunch kale
• 1 loaf bread--This can be day old because it's going to be grilled.  I used a Kalamata boule from Whole Foods, but any good bread would work.
• 1 sm. can Cannellini--I think it's about 14-15 oz?  Any bean will work like chickpeas.
• 3 heads roasted garlic, less if you prefer (To roast, cut off the top third of each head of garlic, drizzle with olive oil and Kosher salt, wrap tightly in aluminum foil and roast in oven at 350 for 90 minutes. I usually do this the day before or whenever the weather is coolest that week.)  
• Olive oil
• Lemon Juice
• S & P
• Aleppo pepper, regular crushed red pepper flakes will work just as well

Make all the components ahead of time before you start the grill.  (Oven toasted bread works well in the winter months.)

For the Bean-Garlic spread:

Squeeze all the roasted garlic from the heads, taking care to pick out any paper skin that clings.  Drain and rinse the beans.  Please all ingredients if a mini food processor if you have one, other wise you're going to have to use a mortar-pestle or a bowl, masher, whisker, etc. Add a bit of S&P, squeeze of lemon, and a drizzle of oil.  Use whatever means you have at your disposal to make this into the smoothest paste possible.  You don't want it runny. You want a smooth spread that will stick to the bread and act as a "glue" to keep the kale salad on the bruschetta.  

For the Kale salad:

Bring the absolutely largest pot of water that you own, to a rolling boil.  (If you use a smaller pan or a steamer, you risk the kale losing it's bright green color before it's cooked enough.) Add kosher salt, more than you think you should.  (The additional salt helps keep the kale bright green!)  Have a large bowl of ice water standing nearby.  Strip the kale from the stems, and tear into equally medium to large pieces.  Drop the kale into the boiling water and keep testing leaves, you want them to become just softened without losing any of their bright green color.  Ere on the side of less cooking time.  Immediately transfer the kale to the ice water and make sure it is completely submerged to stop the cooking process.  Dry the dale with a salad spinner or paper towels; I use both.  Dress the kale with olive oil, the juice of an entire lemon, S&P, and some type of hot seasoning like Aleppo or crushed red pepper flakes.  

Slice the bread, brush generously with olive oil, and grill over coals, or toast in the oven.  Assemble bruschetta with a schmear of Bean-Garlic paste and arrange the Kale salad.  Serve immediately.  Can set at room temp for a few hours as long as you thoroughly dried the kale leaves before dressing them.  Enjoy.

Salad . . . and other drugs

Yes, salad.  We are all told that we should toss a healthy salad several times a week at home as an appetizer to dinner.  The intelligentsia set amongst us also know that we can serve the salad after the entree as a sort of light refreshing course to end the meal and aid in digestion.  Recently my wife and I followed a vegan diet for the course of three weeks.  (Okay, there was a couple swordfish steaks that I couldn't resist at Whole Foods one day.)  However, it was a valuable lesson in what I call the "diminishing returns" of the palate. 

Often when I am making a sandwich, and I am trying to cut calories, I amp up the acidic components such as mustard, vinegar, pickles, peppers, etc.  However, when I put cheese on the same sandwich, I noticed I didn't really taste the cheese as much because it wasn't the focus of flavor anymore.  In fact, I was just eating the calories of the cheese but pretty much tasting a whole bunch of giardiniera.  Hence, I learned to leave out the cheese.  But I digress, back to diminishing returns, actually that was what I just got done explaining.  Maybe I didn't digress after all.  The takeaway point, is that I learned that I didn't miss cheese as a component of many dishes, it had diminishing returns if it wasn't the focus of the overall flavor profile.  Many times, we are eating calories that are not "paying out" in terms of the sensation that we are reaping on the tongue.  I do however still tremendously mourn my ritual of snacking on Brie and baguette while I am cooking dinner.  So, if you are using high calorie components that are merely playing quiet background music in your cooking, cut it out!

Another thing that I observe when trying to rein in my diet is how many healthy foods I observe in deli cases at the finer grocery stores:  wheat berry salads, blanched kale with sesame oil, fresh fruit salads, cold whole-grain noodles with peanut sauce and cabbage, etc.  I always think to myself that if I had the time to make all that stuff, I'd be much healthier chap.  Okay, now this post has turned into three main points:  1) Diminishing Returns:  What is the flavor payout as a ratio to amount of calories?  Mustard has a very high payout, excessive oil may not.  2) If my refrigerator looked like the deli case at Whole Foods, I'd probably be thinner due to never having to rely on "quick" or "cheater" snacks like chips, crackers, etc. and now my original point which I still haven't gotten around to yet: 3) Salads should focus on lettuces some of the time, not ad nauseum, ad infinitum.  I realize that stocking the fridge with healthy salads can be both time consuming and expensive.  Such is the fact that we live in the only country in the world where processed foods are cheaper than their healthier counterparts. (Thank you US government for accidentally creating this phenomena by subsidizing corn production.)

To my original point, I made a lovely Farro and Roasted Butternut Squash side for dinner last night.  You can read the recipe here.  I'm not going to repeat the recipe because you can link to it and read it for yourself.  However, we are going to talk about this in just a little bit more detail:  Is this an entree, a side dish or a salad?  It is, in fact, all three.  Served with a side of vegetables, it is easily a lovely dinner in its own right.  I put it on the side of a roasted chicken, a lovely side dish. Now if any of you know me well, you know that I cannot cook a recipe without diverging from it, at least a little bit.  I left out the goat cheese and added dried cherries. Yes, even though the vegan diet is over, I am trying to eat a more plant based diet.  Besides, I think it improved the recipe immeasurably by leaving out the tang of cheese and adding the tang of cherries. 

So now, we are going to return to my three main points listed above. 1) I decided that the goat cheese would have diminishing returns.  Yes, it may add a little bit of tang, but it would be overpowered by the other strong flavors present, walnut oil, farro, roasted onions.  Calories without a lot of return.  I should also mention here that I recently bought a lovely bottle of walnut oil and it's changing my world.  2) My refrigerator needs to resemble a deli case so that I have lunch for the following day.  So, I followed the original recipe to cook enough to have leftovers.  But here now is how we morph a hearty side dish into a salad, I added a splash of tarragon vinegar to lift the flavors and change the flavor profile so that it would taste good cold.  Voila!  3)  Salads need to stop being leaves.  Clearly, this salad doesn't have a leaf near it, however, if you had this farro salad left over and needed to stretch it and serve it as an appetizer to a crowd, you could easily cut up a hearty romaine and toss it in, tasting for seasoning to ensure that the salad still has the right balance of oil, vinegar, and salt.  If you learn one thing, I hope that when you look in the refrigerator and see that you are out of spring mix, you turn to your pantry and wonder to yourself what you can do with chilled, cooked lentils, beans, grains, and other clever things.  There is a world of salad beyond just leaves, and I don't mean potato salad.