A Stack of Dishes

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blue cheese

Fruited Nut Paste with Pan Roasted Pears

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Balsamic Pear w Blue Cheese~A Stack of Dishes.comThis recipe is what I refer to as a “tumble along”. It all started with a unexptected bag of pears from our friend Gail Cox, which she harvested off of her tree in Arkansas. In the bag that she handed me were a half-dozen hard green pears with gorgeous obtuse shapes and the sweetest flesh. Then a day later came fragrant snips of rosemary from Susan Pierce’s garden, my neighbor across the street (I’m trying to root it now so I can grow my own crop- any advice?). Then finally a hunk of blue cheese I had just purchased on our last trip to Dallas begged to get in on the act.

The fun part is the mental matrix of how to play with these foods. I rolled around the flavors in my mind, pulling them this way and that, into a cold dish, then over to a warm…. Eventually I came around to a version of a savory tart, which lead to how to include dried fruits and nuts- and then how to enhance that gorgeous blue cheese…. and then I thought about shape…. [Read more…] about Fruited Nut Paste with Pan Roasted Pears

Roasted Blue Pear Salad

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The new year is starting off to be the most hectic yet. Happily I can say that I am experiencing an embarrassment of riches.

I have now commenced my final semester of studies, which means I am feverishly working on my Master’s Thesis. I had been dreading this project, but now that I’ve sunk my teeth into it I am finding it to be extremely soul satisfying. As I work through the research I can feel the hours, months and years of my education coming to fruition. It’s like moving to a foreign land and suddenly you realize that you are a fluent speaker and you can get around with ease. I KNOW this stuff! Even better is I have come to appreciate that the mind- my mind– has the capacity to learn and expand in ways I never thought possible.

At the beginning of the year I also started my field work with Toby Amidor, RD. She is a practicing dietitian who also writes for The TV Food Network’s Healthy Eating Blog, Sear’s Fit Studio, and countless other publications. She is monster in the amount that she juggles, which she does with incredible grace and intensity. I met Toby back in December at a lecture that she was giving on social media for dietitians. I knew immediately that I wanted to work with her, and I am delighted that she agreed to take me on.

With Toby I am learning to be a more technical writer, and she is introducing me to the world of the entrepreneurial dietitian. It’s been a staggering departure from the writing I do here and I am loving it.

I am also gearing up for The Cookbook Conference next week at Hotel Roger Smith. I attended last year and was blown away. The venue is intimate, which enabled me to meet and chat with some of the heavy hitters in the cookbook world. It was there that I also met some of my dearest foodie friends to date, Gail Dosik, Maggie Battista, Cathy Wheelbarrow– to name just a few.

So, my dear ones, I haven’t had the time to develop new recipes at all. Most of my day is spent chained to my desk digging into pages and pages of research analysis. I haven’t had much time to shop either, so for fun I decided to give myself a little challenge and not shop at all this week.

The goal was to see if I could prepare a week’s worth of elegant, albeit simple, meals with just the things I had on hand. Surprisingly this has been a fun little experiment and not nearly as tough as I thought it would be. This may however be more of a statement to my stocking treasures {read TOO many treasures} that I don’t get around to consuming.

I’ve used spices I brought back from Thailand to make green curry over scented rice. I handmade tortillas with masa, and filled them with shrimp out of the freezer and accented it with homemade sriracha. I’ve eaten frozen yogurt with some dulce de leche leftover from the holidays, and I’ve made pizza dough, which I piled with the odds and ends of the vegetable bin and the cheese drawer.  It’s been so much fun I may keep on going until I am forced to stop. Once I started getting creative with what’s on hand, I got myself on a roll. {next is whole grain waffles with warm fruit compote using frozen fruits, and I’ve got polenta, ricotta cheese and spinach which will become something…}

This pear salad happened earlier this week. One of my treasures was a fresh wedge of my favorite blue cheese {Rogue Creamery Smoked Blue}. I had only 2 strips of applewood smoked bacon, so this plus that became the other.

I have a hard time eating salads in the winter. Once an Ayurvedic practitioner told me I was a something-or-other, (hatha? pitta?), which explained that I preferred warm foods during the cold days and vice versa. It’s not like I needed telling, I tend to shy away from the thought of crispy salads in the darker days of the year. Roasting the pears though takes the edge off. It also adds the best flavor in the world, caramelization, which is really the only excuse I need.

Roasted Blue Pear Salad
serves 4
 
2 strips of thick apple smoked bacon
1T unsalted butter
1t sugar
2 bosc pears
juice of one small lemon
.25 t dijon mustard
.5 clove garlic, minced
~5T olive oil- to taste
S & P
4 handfuls baby arugula, washed
.25c red onion, thinly sliced
2 oz Rogue Creamery Smoked Blue Cheese
 
Preheat the oven to 350˚
 
In a small, oven proof sauté pan over medium heat,  fry the bacon until crisp. Drain the bacon on paper towels, reserving the fat.
 
Pour off all but 1T of bacon grease and add butter and sugar. Melt over medium heat.
 
Cut pears in half and using a teaspoon gauge out the centers creating a delicate cup.
 
Place pears face down in the pan and cook for 2-3 minutes until a nice caramelization develops of the edges of the pears. Then place the entire pan in the oven.
 
Meanwhile, in a large bowl place the lemon juice, mustard and garlic and whisk to combine. While continuing to whisk, slowly add the oil until emulsified. Taste for acid balance, adding more oil if needed. Then salt and pepper to taste.
 
Toss in arugula and onions and turn over with tongs to cover in dressing. Divide greens amongst 4 plates.
 
When the pears turn a brownish color and start to show translucency around the edges, remove from the oven.
 
Place a pear on each place and stuff center with cheese. Sprinkle with chopped bacon and serve warm.
 
A little extra salt and a fresh grind of pepper is a nice finish.

 

Rogue Creamery and Magical Moments: Broiled Tomatoes with Smoked Blue Cheese

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Rogue Creamery Smoked Blue and Roelli Cheese Dunbarton Blue (Cheddar Blue mix)

Right before I headed out to Portland for the IFBC conference, I was roaming around the Flat Iron District and got drawn into Beechers Cheese Shop like a magnet to metal. It’s a cheese lover’s play pen. At every turn is a gorgeous case full of delights, crackers, jams, books and displays. Wonderland! And in the back is a take out section for way too awesome grilled cheese sandwiches. I’ve been in before and walked out in bliss with a perfectly crusty hot gooey grilled cheddar with fig jam. Had you been able to see the look on my face you would have thought me tranced- which I was.

I had just come from the Union Square Farmer’s Market, which is only steps away, with a cache of New Jersey beefsteak tomatoes and a few yellow ones too. Man do I love August’s bounty. I’ve been trying to slim down a tad, so standing amongst rows of delectable cheeses is extremely dangerous.

I decided to then just innocently do a little reconnaissance, you know, for FUTURE posts, and then just like that- I became overcome with lust. My little eye spied a gorgeous cheese from Oregon- the above pictured Rogue Creamery Smoked Blue. After a small tease of a taste, I had to have a chunk. While standing at the counter I overheard another cheese fool wax poetically about the Dunbarton Blue, which is not only beautiful like a watercolor, but remarkable in ways I promises to explain in an upcoming post.

Tomatoes and Cheese ready for the broiler

What was even MORE remarkable though, was just a few days later, during a speed tasting even at the IFBC conference- who came ambling over to our table, but one of the owners of Rogue Creamery with this EXACT same cheese! Such a sweet woman, who so sweetly and quietly promoted her cheese, that I had to jump up and start blathering away about it (my NYer comes out at the most interesting of moments). I think I startled her a little bit- but seriously- this is good stuff and and should NOT be underplayed in my opinion.

Presenting the Smoked Blue Cheese
I’m a bit of a sucker for coincidences- so I took this as a sign from the heavens that this cheese and I are meant to be. I know this is a silly statement- but in a way, it’s very true, and I am grateful.

I think what’s best about this story is that it’s just affirms for me that the good things in life are not that complicated. Once I stopped putting things off, or restraining myself for made up reasons- that the goodness began to generate it’s own natural flow.

One of my favorite quotes about success is: “Success is when opportunity meets preparedness”. I’ve always attributed this to the work place, but I am being reminded on a daily basis, in myriads of small ways, that successes are all around us.

I used to be very successful in business, and had all the attributes that come with that- but I didn’t have these quiet, soul fulfilling moments. What’s even more exciting is that they come one after the other! I don’t seek them out, I have no intentions when I walk out the door, or click on a new blog, or start a conversation while standing on a line somewhere- but the riches are spilling out all around me constantly.

After returning home with my tomatoes and cheese I set about making this simple afternoon treat. Great on it’s own or as a side dish, but I think it’s also great to serve with cocktails or a glass of wine.

I simply sliced my tomatoes nice and thickly, sprinkled them with some of the cheese and ran it under the broiler for a few minutes- just to warm and sweeten the tomatoes, and melt the cheese. A quick sprinkle of flaked salt and a grind of pepper went down before topping it all off with some paper thin sliced red onion.

Delving into serendipitous bounty.

I hope these little magical moments happen for you. I want this to happen for you. As the school year begins and we start hurtling toward the end of the calendar year- my wish is that we are able to enjoy these moments of joy and deliciousness.