Yes, it’s true, I’m still talking about our gorgeous Sunday Valentine’s Day at the Queen Creek Olive Mill, hope you don’t mind ~ because I really love that place! I picked up a bottle of one of their new flavored balsamic vinegars. Fig Balsamic – delicious!

You too can have a bottle of the balsamic or any one of their amazing olive oils… just click here and mail order.

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The original version of this recipe is from Tyler Florence of the Food Network.  I made his recipe for a series of classes I just finished teaching at Les Gourmettes Cooking School. With Tyler’s Twice Cooked Potatoes, the second cooking is achieved by deep frying the potatoes, and are they delicious! But after serving 33 students in two nights, I came to the conclusion that using the original version as part of a buffet doesn’t work well because of the final frying step. The potatoes are best eaten immediately, as most fried foods are.  What made the potatoes so wonderful was the crispiness achieved by deep frying.  My double roasting technique results in a similar crisp texture, but without the extra fat, plus the potatoes can now be served hot or held at room temperature, without becoming greasy. Not only are these potatoes a great vegetable side-dish, they also make perfect little party nibbles!

Aïoli is a garlic and olive oil sauce from France, with a texture very much like mayonnaise. Aïoli is sometimes called the “butter of Provence” because it is such an integral part of their cuisine. In Provence, usually two cloves are used per person, that may seem like a lot, but roasting the garlic as done here, mellows out the garlic considerably.

The Cuisinart has a special feature just for the purpose of making fresh mayonnaise and aïoli. The lid has a spout (a feed tube) with a “food pusher”.  The food pusher has a small hole in the bottom that allows oil to drip slowly into the work bowl at just the right rate, a “slow and steady stream” allowing the mayonnaise to emulsify perfectly.

a tiny hole in bottom of the "food pusher" allows oil to drip at perfect rate. a toothpick is sticking up through clear pusher so the hole is visible, the other dots are not holes, just little bumps in the plastic

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Recycling is a wonderful thing… not only with paper and plastic, but with food too. Of course, the most basic form of food recycling is reusing leftovers, taking the leftover beef from a roast and making burritos, for instance.  Or in this case, using the red wine poaching liquid from the poached pear post on 11/18/09 and using it to flavor this wonderful Thanksgiving side dish. Don’t fret if you didn’t make the poached pear recipe but want to make this, just use red wine in place of the poaching liquid.

I’m using frozen “petite whole onions” also known as pearl onions for this recipe.  Until about a month ago, I did not even know that pearl onions were sold peeled and frozen. What a find, all these years I’ve been meticulously boiling and peeling them myself!

The soaking liquid for the dried mushrooms is also reused here.  If you have any left after using the 1/2 cup asked for in this recipe, freeze it and use to enrich sauces or deglaze pans in the future. And be sure to recycle those Thanksgiving leftovers too! I’ll post plenty of ideas after  Thursday.
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Ingredients for Green Chile Macaroni

Connor is coming home for the Labor Day weekend this afternoon. I texted him earlier this morning and asked what he would like for dinner… strangely enough he said, “rotisserie chicken and good mac and cheese.” The reason I say “strange” is because one of his most basic “college foods” is Easy Mac – so it is the last thing I’d ever guess he would want. But of course, he did say “Good” mac and cheese and that means one thing – Robert McGrath’s Green Chile Macaroni. This is the best mac and cheese you can imagine! Robert is one of my favorite chefs and honestly one of my favorite people. His cookbook, American Western Cooking has this and so many other amazingly delicious recipes. I’m writing the recipe just as it appears in the book, but I generally use only 1/4 cup heavy cream plus 1/2 cup fat-free half-and-half. And Connor really likes to have breadcrumbs on top of his mac and cheese. If you do too, just melt 1 tablespoon butter with 1 tablespoon olive oil in a small skillet, add 1 peeled and minced garlic clove and 1/2 cup dried bread crumbs or panko and sauté until crumbs are browned. Sprinkle on top of just before serving.

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Dinner has been decided upon for this lovely (it’s only supposed to get up to 99 degrees today!) Sunday. And not decided by me, but instead by my garden.  I went out this morning, while it was only 84 degrees, and noticed that if I didn’t do something about the luscious basil going wild and the very tall bay laurel tree in my garden that they would take it over.  I’m thinking about a starter of flatbread with basil in the dough, with a basil oil and roasted tomatoes with – wait for it… basil pesto!  And maybe salmon grilled on top of the bay leaves and lemon slices and also some yukon gold potatoes braised in stock and more bay leaves.  I’ve had crème brûlée scented with fresh bay leaves before and although it was delicious, I really don’t want to stand over the hot stove in the summer “stirring constantly” (two of my least favorite words!) a steaming custard.  After painting that little picture for myself, the crème brûlée definitely OUT!  So something else maybe with the bay leaves for dessert – any thoughts out there?  I am off to the movies….

……I am thankful no one came up with any dessert ideas because I was actually to busy to even think about dessert today! Dave and I saw Inglorious Basterds early this afternoon and LOVED it!  This from a girl who has to put her hands over her eyes during the icky parts!  And there were plenty of icky parts, but I still want to go back and see it again!   I’m not a huge Quentin Tarantino fan, I liked Kill Bill(s) and  Pulp Fiction but this movie was just so cool, and Brad Pitt… love him even more than before, if that is possible.  What about Christoph Waltz?  If he isn’t nominated for an Oscar, there is something wrong in the movie biz!   Enough about that, this is a “cooking/food blog” so on to the rest of the that part of the day…  After the movie and a Costco run, arrived home at about 3:00 and began making the Grand Basil-Bay Dinner.  Good friends, Chris and Kathy Froggatt, were to arrive at 6:00, with nice wines in hand!  It was a great evening with good friends.  They recounted their wonderful vacation-cruise to Monaco, Italy, and Greece (ready to go tomorrow after hearing about it all!)  Amidst all the catching up and garden touring, I totally burned (we’ll call it charred!) the flatbread while grilling it.  But we enjoyed it anyway because the Bay Leaf Roasted Tomatoes that topped it were still tasty and the Baileyana Chardonnay  that Chris brought somehow washed away all thoughts of those nasty carcinogens we were ingesting.  Dinner itself went off much better.   We had a fabulous Chasseur Pinot Noir from Sonoma and the bay laurel flavors present in the fish and potatoes were truly sublime. Kathy is not a salmon fan, so I did a “personal-size” piece of halibut for her.  I think the individual size is a really nice presentation for a more formal dinner.  A bit more work to individually wrap each piece of fish, but it’ll cook faster and it does look fancy!  One last note about the salmon.  It is drizzled with olive oil, and any fruity olive oil will do, but I adore our own local Queen Creek Olive Mill Meyer Lemon Olive Oil. It is available locally at A.J.’s or can be ordered online at http://www.queencreekolivemill.com/productdetail.jsp?ProductID=28. And if you are a neighbor or live close enough to drop by, just give me a call if you want to make any of the dishes with the fresh bay leaves.  You can have all you’ll need, free for the taking.  The salmon recipe uses way too many leaves to purchase at the store in those tiny herb packages (when you can find it).   So don’t be shy, the bay tree grows better when it is pruned, so you’ll be doing me a favor, really!

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