With Labor Day weekend coming up, and outdoor parties and barbecues on the horizon, it’s good to have a classic guacamole recipe in your back pocket.

Although I don’t have brothers or sisters, I never felt lonely when I was growing up. My mother and father had siblings to spare, and my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins gathered often — to celebrate birthdays, holidays, half birthdays, television events. One of the main reasons I wanted to move back to Los Angeles from New York was to give the Nuni (then just a twinkle in her parents’ eye) that family and community that I grew up with.

The menu varies — my mother makes mean spare ribs, my aunt often grills sausages. My grandmother’s fallback is barbecued chicken, and the sweet spicy taste of her favored brand of barbecue sauce takes me immediately to childhood summer evenings, shivering in a wet bathing suit while the scent of charcoal smoke fills the air. But whatever the main dish was, we always began with guacamole.

If you grow up in California, avocados are in your blood. They’re available at every roadside stand and farmers’ market, and you probably know someone with a tree in their back yard. And as a result, they show up everywhere — in a green salad, on a BLT, or even on a hamburger. But nothing shows off the nutty flavor and luscious texture of an avocado quite like guacamole.

This is my aunt Suzi’s guacamole recipe. It’s easy and quick to make, spicy and salty, with perfect creamy chunks of avocado, tiny bursts of tomato and the scent of cilantro and lime. To me, it’s the ur guacamole — the one all others aspire to. She makes hers in a molcajete, the traditional lava rock pestle, but I’ve found a cuisinart works just as well. With a few tortilla chips and a glass of white wine, nothing says home to me quite like this guacamole.

Recipe
Guacamole
Always use Hass avocados, the kind with nearly black, very bumpy skin. Their flavor and texture is superior. This recipe is quite spicy (depending on the size and heat of your chiles) — you can reduce the chiles to cut back on the heat, or substitute the serrano for jalapeno.

1/4 small white onion
2 serrano chiles, halved and seeds removed
4 large sprigs fresh cilantro, leaves only
Juice of 1/2 lime
1/4 tsp. salt
2 large Hass avocados
1 large tomato, finely chopped
Additional salt to taste

In a small food processor*, combine onion, chiles, cilantro, lime juice and salt, and process until smooth and liquid. (If using a molcajete, chop the onion and chiles first, then grind with cilantro, juice and salt until smooth).

Cut the avocados in half. Remove pits (I usually smack them with a chef’s knife to bury the edge in the pit, then twist to remove), and scoop the flesh out into a small bowl. Mash with a fork. Don’t let the avocados get too smooth – some remaining chunks are good. Mix in the chile cilantro mixture, add chopped tomatoes, and stir until combined. Salt to taste — I think this guacamole tastes best when it’s a little on the salty side. Serve with tortilla chips.

*I received a cuisinart mini chopper for free from Cuisinart as an attended of Blogher Food 2009.

© Kate for Savour Fare, 2010. | Permalink |
Post tags: avocado, Gluten Free, holiday, vegan, Vegetarian

This past weekend, I traveled to Seattle to attend the International Food Bloggers’ Conference, 2010. I’m still mulling over the main takeaways I have from the weekend, which will come in a separate post, but I thought I’d share with you all some of the details of the event. I will say that while the schedule was jam packed, the content was generally excellent. I know that Foodista and Zephyr Adventures, the organizers of the event, will have several of the sessions available online at the conference website, and if you are interested in the whys and hows of food blogging, they are definitely worth watching. The sponsors listed on the site are also worth checking out. I was incredibly impressed with the commitment of all the sponsors to creating and producing amazing food and food related products. The sponsors were chosen well, and were a terrific fit for the conference attendees, all of whom care deeply about food, how it is produced, and where it comes from. What the website can’t provide is the amazing food we were offered and the amazing people in attendance. To every single person I spoke with this weekend, I want to say this: “I’m so glad we got to meet and talk at IFBC. I just wish we had had more time for conversation!” Food bloggers and food producers are quite an amazing group of people, and the passion in the room was palpable. Sadly, I was too busy talking to people to photograph them, but, true to my calling, I did make pictures of a lot of the food:

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Read the rest of International Food Bloggers’ Conference 2010 — What We Ate (605 words)

© Kate for Savour Fare, 2010. | Permalink |
Post tags: IFBC, Photo

In the summertime, I’m usually all about the simple food. The amazing fruits and vegetables practically prepare themselves for dinner, and a typical weeknight menu will look something like this: BLT, Caprese Salad, Sauteed zucchini on toast, pasta with tomatoes and olive oil, and another BLT (I really like BLT’s). But sometimes the occasion calls for a little more sophistication. Something that’s a little more exotic, that requires some more thought, some more layers of flavor. But at the same time, you don’t want to lose the wonderful casualness of summer dining — the feeling that every meal should be eaten outdoors and barefoot.

When I saw this recipe in last month’s food and wine, I knew I had found my summer dinner party dish. The prep is incredibly simple – no marinating required, no fancy cooking. And the flavors are fantastic — complex, bright, nutty, and utterly satisfying. The shrimp are intensely flavorful fro(...)
Read the rest of Miso Shrimpo Po’ Boys — Summer Sophistication (380 words)

© Kate for Savour Fare, 2010. | Permalink |
Post tags: grill, sandwiches, shrimp, Summer

Somehow I blinked and it’s mid August. Labor Day is in sniffing distance, the days are getting shorter, the stores are full of sweaters, and I seem to have missed summer. Every year I have a mental list of things that I will do in the summer. Swimming in a cold pool, then lying in the sun until my swimsuit is dry, then jumping back in. Going on the ferris wheel at the pier. Sitting in my garden as the sun gets low, drinking Pimm’s Cups and chatting with good friends. And here it is nearly September and there are so many things still on my list.

But one thing I have done is enjoyed the summer produce. I love the berries and the peaches, the watermelon and the plums. But nothing screams summer quite like corn and tomatoes. These vegetables, so anemic and disappointing if you venture to eat them fresh during any other time of the year, bust out into full, sweet glory in the summertime. More than anything else, summer is eating corn, spread with butter, each sweet juicy kernel bursting in your mouth. And summer is the smell of red, ripe tomatoes, the juices dripping down your chin.

This pie is summer. I saw the recipe last year, when it was printed in the dear, departed pages of Gourmet, and filed it for later. Later is now, because this pie is phenomenal. Sweet crisp corn and juicy tomatoes, bound together with creaminess and cheddar cheese, and if that wasn’t enough to tempt you, the pie crust here isn’t a regular old pie crust, but buttermilk biscuit dough, rolled thin. This pie is the taste of summer camp, of fireflies, of jumping in a cold lake and sweet months of vacation. This pie is the summer I’ve been missing.

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Read the rest of Corn and Tomato Pie — Summer in a Crust (505 words)

© Kate for Savour Fare, 2010. | Permalink |
Post tags: buttermilk, corn, Tomatoes, Vegetarian

This is not, as you may have divined, one of those recipes that yields beautiful food. Each bit is not an aesthetic delight, and this is not going to grace the cover of any food publication that I know. But what it is is this: deeply, deeply delicious. And EEEASY. So easy that just writing easy was not sufficient.

When Deb over at Smitten Kitchen (which remains to this day on my list of most inspiring food blogs wrote this post about this raspberry gratin I was intrigued. I love variations on berries and cream, and this, with the caramelized sugar, is really the poor man’s creme brulee (or given the price of raspberries on the open market, the very very rich man’s creme brulee.

Now I LOVE raspberries, but I hold them in such reverence that dimming their flavor with (really, a lot of) sour cream seemed like a bit of a cruel fate. But then, I was visiting one of my favorite vendors at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market and their crazydelicious (and very reasonably priced) Tra-Zee peaches called out to me. A ripe peach is delicious and exquisite but not quite the valuable commodity that fresh raspberries are. And nobody can deny that peaches and cream are a classic pairing. And besides, this dish is an excellent way to use those perfect ripe peaches that may have gotten a little squished or bruised on their way home.

I peeled the peaches — to do this the proper way involves slitting the skins in a large cross and blanching them in boiling water, but if you are lazy (like me) and have a good peeler (I have both a Kuhn Rikon Original Swiss Peeler and an Oxo Good Grips Swivel Peeler) you can take the peels off by hand. I also added bourbon to the cream, because I’ve never met a Russian who will turn down a little extra firewater kick, and the whole thing took MAYBE five minutes.

Five minutes to this kind of deliciousness? I’m sold. This is going to be part of my repertoire all summer long. Pretty be da&*ed.

Recipe
Peaches and Cream Russian Gratin
Adapted from The Smitten Kitchen

3 Large ripe peaches, peels removed and cut into bite sized chunks.
1 pint (2 cups) sour cream
2 T bourbon
1 cup brown sugar

Combine the bourbon and the sour cream in a gratin dish. Fold together the sour cream mixture and the peaches, top with brown sugar. Pop under the broiler (watch it carefully! This burns FAST) until the sugar is bubbly. Eat while warm, when the brown sugar is wonderfully crunchy and grainy, then let the leftovers (if any) sit in the refrigerator where you’ll end up with this wonderful peachy cream with liquid brown sugar streaks.

© Kate for Savour Fare, 2010. | Permalink |
Post tags: easy, peaches, sour cream, sweet, weeknight

With the dog days of summer still to come, it’s useful to have a few recipes up your sleeve that require NO cooking. Not three hours in the oven, not 30 minutes on the stove, not boiling water, not a toaster oven. There are times when raising the temperature in your kitchen, even infinitesimally, is not an option. And that is the time when our thoughts turn to gazpacho.

Everyone’s familiar with the cold red soup of tomatoes and peppers — sometimes garnished with croutons, sometimes with chopped vegetables or herbs – that is the classic gazpacho. But the world of gazpacho goes beyond cold and red. Years ago, I attended a sherry tasting dinner in New York, that was six courses of Spanish food, paired with different sherries. I don’t remember everything I ate that night (though I do remember feelings as if I had to physically roll out of the restaurant) but I do remember the first course, which was paired with a light, dry sherry — a creamy white cold soup that was heady with garlic aroma and garnished with the unexpected addition of halved green grapes. It was savory and sweet, satisfying and exciting all at once. And when I saw a similar recipe in the newspaper a few weeks ago (us Angelenos are desperately trying to hold on to the IDEA of summer cuisine, even if we are wearing our woolies while we cook it), I knew it would become a staple of my summer repertoire.
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Read the rest of White Almond Garlic Gazpacho with Green Grapes (319 words)

© Kate for Savour Fare, 2010. | Permalink |
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One of the things I love most about writing a food blog is that people come out of the woodwork with their best and most cherished recipes. I don’t know if they want a moment in this small spotlight, they entrust me, as an “expert” to recreate their family treasures, or they are just inspired by the community of cooking to share, but I am glad, whatever the motivation. Although I love my cookbook collection fiercely, and poor over the food glossies every month looking for recipes and inspiration, nothing floats my boat so much as a tried and true family favorite — a recipe that is burnished by love and experience until it just shines. And they’re almost always completely and totally delicious (we will ignore for the moment my own family’s recipe for tomato aspic made with tomato juice, lemon jello and chopped celery and served with a side of mayonnaise).

This is one of those recipes that makes me happy to be working in food and writing about food, because if I wasn’t, this recipe might never have come into my life. It comes from the kitchen of Spring (her actual name), the lovely mama of my lovely friend Rebecca (progenitor of the Bacon Salted Caramel Brownies – these people know good food.) Spring is very English but has lived in California for years and years — this dish, in my mind, combines the best of those two culinary traditions — an English focus on simple heartiness (and gravy!), with California Mediterranean flavors.
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Read the rest of Spring’s Parmesan Rosemary Chicken (348 words)

© Kate for Savour Fare, 2010. | Permalink |
Post tags: chicken, weeknight

Mostly, Savour Fare is about enabling. I truly believe that, to quote Ratatouille (when you have a 2.5 year old in the house, you watch a lot of Pixar movies), “Anyone can cook.” I try to provide you with the tools and confidence to cook great food from scratch in your own kitchen.

This post isn’t about that, though. This isn’t about enabling, it’s about jealousy. Because when I tell you where I went last weekend, I know the green-eyed monster will be reading over your shoulder. Because, you see, I was invited to a truffle party. That’s right, 13 separate dishes of fresh black Italian summer truffles (the summer truffles are slightly less pungent than the winter truffles, but they are still enough to make a grown man cry.) The lovely Erika of In Erika’s Kitchen (who luckily for me happens to be a fellow alumna of my alma mater and works in my building to boot) through a fantastic shindig that included fantastic dishes like Truffled Macaroni and Cheese, Corn Veloute with freshly grated truffles on top, Radish and Truffle Butter Tartines (with freshly grated truffles on top), Crostini with Ricotta and Truffle Honey (again with the freshly grated truffles), Green Beans with Porcini Mushroom-Truffle Dip, Truffle Risotto with truffles grated on top (are you beginning to sense a theme here?), Truffle Grilled Cheese Sandwiches,Filet Mignon Sandwiches with Truffle Butter, and to top it all off, Truffled Chocolate Truffles. Yes, it was that decadent, and the house was lovely and the company (many fellow food bloggers and other food people) was terrific.

The hostess, hard at work on the truffle risotto

I don’t know if Erika has a trust fund I don’t know about or if she just got a screamingly good deal from her dealer (Truffle dealer that is), but this was a party I was lucky to have attended. And if you want to recreate this party at home, many of the recipes are included on Erika’s website.

I’ll return to our regularly scheduled programming soon (you don’t need a pound of truffles to make delicious food, trust me!) but I’ll leave you with one last lingering look:

Greg of Sippity Sup was the official truffle model of the evening.

© Kate for Savour Fare, 2010. | Permalink |
Post tags: Events, Truffles

The first meal you cook in a new kitchen feels portentous. As if the success or failure of all future culinary endeavors rests on the results of that one meal. It shouldn’t be too simple, or too fancy. You don’t want too much room for error, or something that’s *gasp* boring. It should be just right.

So when I unpacked my kitchen, and decided my long cooking hiatus would come to an end, I wanted to prepare the perfect meal. I wanted it to be familiar, but novel. Seasonal comfort food. In the first kitchen that’s Mine in my very first house, I wanted something that said “Home.”

And so I chose soup.

Now I know that soup may not be the most obvious choice for a summer dish. Soups are associate with cold days and long slow simmers on a hot stove. And the usual summer soups – your gazpachos and your vichyssoises and your fruit soups — while delicious, are not homey. But this soup combines the best of both worlds. It’s a hearty soup, made with a bounty of summer vegetables which are delicious in soup — green beans, zucchini – and it simmers for less than an hour, as it gets a big flavor boost from a large spoonful of basil pesto, whose sharp summery flavor wakes up your tastebuds. It can be served hot or lukewarm, and it’s perfect for those long summer evenings. Soupe Au Pistou is a classic Provencal dish, and it can be made with whatever looks best at your local farmer’s market.

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Read the rest of Soupe Au Pistou – Feels Like Home (440 words)

© Kate for Savour Fare, 2010. | Permalink |
Post tags: French, soup, Summer, Vegetables

If my summer recipe roundup wasn’t enough for you, I have a new post up over at The Mushroom Channel that features a recipe for this gorgeous (and delicious) mushroom pizza.

© Kate for Savour Fare, 2010. | Permalink |
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