Tuscan Kale Salad

I made this salad for Thanksgiving 2011. I rinsed and removed the ribs from two bunches of organic Tuscan kale (also known as lacinato kale or dinosaur kale) and tore the leaves into bite-sized pieces and let them dry for a bit while I made a vinaigrette. The vinaigrette: 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar, 4 teaspoons honey, 4 teaspoons mustard, and a ¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil. The key here was to let the kale marinate in the vinaigrette for several hours (in yesterday's case, three or four hours) to soften. I tossed it a few times over the course of the afternoon while I was cooking other dishes, and tossed in about two cups of pomegranate seeds before serving it.

A little French bistro at L&O's

I celebrate my birthday with my friends up at Lydiah and Oskar's home in the Finger Lakes. Oskar, with his business partner Fred, is a vintner, and they produce the most wonderful, drinkable wine in the world, dry riesling.

This year, we had a cook-off against Tom Johnson of Milo Vineyard and his fabulous friends!

We served them:

Roasted peanut salad (served Indian street food-style in newspaper cones)
Zucchini carpaccio with champagne grapes and feta
Chopped salad
Mushroom anticuchos over wasabi-chive cauliflower mash
Watermelon-lime popsicle palate cleansers
Beef rendang and uppama
Sweet corn gelato with blueberry-elderflower coulis and oatmeal cookies

And cases and cases of '09 dry Wiemer riesling!


A little French bistro at L&O's

Cook-off at Milo Vineyard

Cook-off at Milo Vineyard

Mushroom anticuchos

Mushroom anticuchos

To make these, I simmered rice vinegar and sugar until reduced to a syrup, then added soy sauce, aji paste, chestnut paste, and wine and reduced by half. (You could substitute miso for the chestnut paste and mussel broth or clam juice for the wine.)

I seasoned the cleaned mushrooms with salt and pepper, then poured the hot marinade over and let the mushrooms soak up the marinade for a few hours.

We grilled the mushrooms (about four minutes per side) on bamboo skewers. While the mushrooms were grilling, I heated and further reduced the marinade. We removed the mushrooms from the skewers and placed them atop the wasabi-chive cauliflower mash, then poured the hot marinade over the mushrooms as a sauce.