Georgian Cilantro Sauce

I am not sure how I spent my Saturdays before but my routine for several months now has been coffee in bed while I peruse the internets, hitting the gym, and then settling in for back-to-back episodes of "The Splendid Table" and "Louisiana Eats." Generally what I hear goes in one ear and out the other. This is not because it isn't interesting but because between the 20,000 food blogs I read, constantly reading updates on Yelp and voraciously attacking the weekly food installments from the NY Times and Gambit Weekly, I get a little overly saturated with information.

Anyway, this sauce, native to Georgia (country, not state), piqued my interest and I finally made it on Sunday. It's very tasty, I slathered it on some chicken thighs (all over, including under the skin) and then made my boyfriend go outside and grill them in the 26 degree weather. I am a cruel mistress.

I didn't have any parsley so I used all cilantro in its place. That's it, no other changes.


2 ounces dried apricots

1 cup boiling water

1/3 cup shelled walnuts (1 ounce)

2 to 4 garlic cloves (to taste), halved, green shoots removed

1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon salt (more to taste)

Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Pinch of cayenne

2 cups cilantro leaves (2 good-size bunches), coarsely chopped

1 1/2 cups parsley leaves (1 1/2 bunches), coarsely chopped

1/2 cup coarsely chopped mixed basil, tarragon, and dill

5 tablespoons walnut oil (or more, to taste)

1/2 cup soaking water from the apricots, as needed

1. Place the dried apricots in a bowl and pour on the boiling water. Let sit for at least an hour, more if possible, even overnight. Drain over a measuring cup and retain 1/2 cup of the soaking water.

2. Turn on a food processor fitted with the steel blade, and drop in the garlic. When it is chopped and adhering to the sides of the bowl, stop the machine and scrape down the bowl. Add the walnuts, and process with the garlic. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the drained apricots, the lemon juice, salt, pepper and cayenne to the bowl, and process to a puree. Add the cilantro and other chopped herbs, and puree, stopping the machine to scrape down the sides several times. Combine the walnut oil and soaking water from the apricots, and with the machine running, gradually add it to the puree. Process until smooth. Transfer to a bowl, and let sit for one hour. Taste and adjust salt. Serve with beans, chicken, meat or fish, grilled or roasted vegetables, or grains.

Yield: 1 1/2 cups.

Advance preparation: This sauce will keep for several days in the refrigerator. Bring to room temperature before using.

Somebody Loves Me

The boyfriend missed me while I was gone and he welcomed me home with this. This would be seared redfish on homemade gnocchi, topped with watercress and a bit of bacon, sauced with a dijon beurre blanc and finished with truffle oil. I love him.

COLD!!!!!!

I am cold. I went to Chicago for Thanksgiving and it was about 22 degrees there, about 80 in New Orleans when I left. During the four days, I pretty much stayed enrobed in my favorite fleece pajamas and beshawled by miscellaneous afghans. Family members kept going on walks and shooting off to the movies but not me! I entered the house on Wednesday night and I did not emerge until Saturday morning on my way to the airport!

(By the way, T-Day was great. I love my family. I can't believe we can put 16 of us in one house for four days and all enjoy it so thoroughly. It probably helped that we were lubricated by perhaps dozens of bottles of wine and champagne, plus a liberal amount of "the brown," as my uncles affectionately call their stash of Basil Hayden. My nieces are delightful. I ate with wild abandon. I luxuriated with books. Too bad I didn't take any pictures but I leave it to the pros in my family. Gordon? Greg? Cory? Where are the photos? This is your not at all subtle hint!)

Anyway, the weather changed dramatically whilst I was away. It was chilly in NOLA too. Then weirdly it was 78 and humid. Yesterday the temperature inside the house (nothing on, open windows) was 76 degrees. By evening, it was 61. I relented and let the boyfriend turn on the heat. Although I am reluctant to turn on the heat, I do love the chill, brisk walks and soup-making. I made a split pea soup the other day with smoked turkey instead of ham and it was fine but I really prefer the swine. Tonight, I am thinking about a Jamie Oliver recipe for soup with pancetta, barley and sage.

This is weird. Split peas and barley are my new cravings? Oh well, go with it, I say. I'll update you on how the soup turns out!

Thanksgiving List 2010

I think you know the drill now, it's my family's annual make a list of what you are thankful for! If you'd like to read other people's lists or post your own, click here

* Parades for every occasion. That’s NOLA, baby!
* Hotels with free wi-fi. You’d think they all have it but you would be wrong.
* Chivalrous strangers
* Duck stock
* Oysters and having them back after a frightening hiatus.
* Electric kettles
* Fig trees
* Having a washer and dryer on the GROUND FLOOR and INSIDE my house! No more creepy basements or scary sheds for me!
* Discovering the Alto Adige region of Italy and their beautiful wines
* Bayou St. John and Spanish moss
* Pumpkin spice lattes on crisp, fall days, walking the pups and kicking through delicious smelling leaves (I just came back from Denver, obviously I am not referring to New Orleans)
* Being able to walk to work (now that it is not 8,000 degrees out every day)
* Having a dog who knows when I am sad and gives me lots of kisses
* The boyfriend being a super handyman. There are many other reasons I am thankful for him but man, that walk-in closet he built me is GREAT!
* Free, spontaneous street music
* Toasted brown rice green tea
* Fresh caught fish. Again, the boyfriend delivers!
* Sidereel
* Sounds of the streetcar
* Yelp
* Quiet nights and fleece pajamas
* Being able to always go home

Favorite Book: Hmm, I read a lot of duds this year. The books that were most notable include “Who Will Run Frog Hospital?””Watership Down” and “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian.”

Favorite Album: I don’t know anything about albums, when was the last time I actually bought one? Anyway, I’m liking Buika lately.

Favorite Movie: Once. I’m sure this came out a while ago but I am woefully out of date.

Favorite Meal: This is hard because I eat so damn good. I’m going with dinner at my house with my love, my New Orleans brother, my best friend, her babies, my mamma and Gregoire. Grilled oysters, drum and amberjack with chermoula and tzatziki, mustard greens, corn and potatoes, shredded beets, ginger-poached mirliton and a fig vinaigrette. Bruleed bananas foster over homemade lucuma-manjar ice cream. Good food and SO MUCH LOVE.

Favorite Wine: I’m adding this category this year. Orin Swift’s “The Prisoner”

Denver!

I just got back from visiting the Mile High and I ate LOTS of good food, too much really to detail here so I'll just give you the highlights.

Cuba Cuba: Delicious caipirinhas and chorizo empanadas!

Steuben's: Rhode Island calamari kind of threw me for a loop, what is that? Well, since there is a large Portuguese population there, they fried the calamari but served it with olives, tomatoes, garlic and onions and it was very tasty.

NoRTH: Even though I dislike the pretentious way this is written, it was one of my favorite meals. We shared several appetizers including a salad with strawberries, goat cheese, hazelnuts and avocado. It sounded kind of weird but it worked and the goat cheese was ultra creamy. Excellent prosciutto bruschetta and calamari served over a perfectly dressed arugula salad with grilled lemons. My entree was a short rib osso bucco that was excellent and huge and I admit I ate the whole thing. I had a Nutella cake for dessert, it sort of had the texture of a flourless chocolate cake and it made even the non-chocolate lover at the table swoon. I also had a glass of Pinot Nero from the Alto Adige region, which is quickly becoming my favorite wine region.

Panzano: Grilled Caesar salad, always a hit. But the piece de resistance was prosciutto-wrapped prawns with a date-honey-pine nut sauce and sprinkled with a bit of gorgonzola. Stellar. I was sad I didn't have room to try the apple-date fritters for dessert.

1515: Well, we started with a bottle of Orin Swift's "The Prisoner" and if you haven't had this wine and have recently gotten a birthday card full of money or a small bonus at work, I urge you to try it. Beef Carpaccio with truffles, jumbo scallops on a bed of corn puree were both good starts. The croissant soup was very interesting; it came with a egg cooked sous vide and asparagus in the bowl and then the server poured the soup (croissants pureed in chicken stock) into the bowl over these ingredients. Then you swirl the egg around and it becomes extra-luscious, plus you could actually taste the slight sweetness and buttery goodness of the croissant! We also had a salad dressed beautifully with copious tarragon.

Rioja: Apple and basil soup was unremarkable but the housemade bread (I chose kalamata olive bread and a rosemary-goat cheese biscuit) were absolutely delightful, really, they just don't make bread that amazing in New Orleans or at least I don't know where to find it. I had a saffron-manchego risotto that exemplified what I often hate about poorly executed risottos, hard rice. Yet. The flavor was good and it had, YES, a pistachio-pine nut stuffed date on top that really set things off, plus ribbons of arugula and radicchio and a citrus ver jus. I don't know what Denver's obsession is with dates but I can so get with that. For dessert, I had a lemon-yuzu tart with a cornmeal-pinenut crust (decent), served with limoncello granita (tasty but pedestrian) and a pinenut brittle ice cream (yuuuuummmm!). Excellent espresso served with a froth and a lemon rind like it should be.

Thank you Denver, for being so delicious, thanks Tulane for footing the bill, thanks to my lovely Rebecca and Kim and Bob and Jeanne for their inimitable companionship!

The Girl and the Fig

Unfortunately, this is not a post that includes me waxing poetic about a meal I ate at The Girl and the Fig but someday I will get to Sonoma and do just that! No, no, I've just had a number of fig-related encounters over the past month that I'd like to share.

-I bought some beautiful, fat-bottomed figs at Whole Foods and mixed some gorgonzola, chopped walnuts and rosemary together, stuffed the figs and drizzled with balsamic vinegar and they were delightful. I bet they would be good with a scoop of vanilla ice cream but lovely in their own right.

-I often have an egg scrambled with spinach and snippets of basil from my massive basil tree (yes, it's a tree, woody stalk and all)for breakfast. The other day, I also had a piece of toast, smeared with fig preserves, piled with basil-flecked egg, and who knew that the combination of basil and fig was so perfect? I can't recommend it enough.

-Speaking of those fig preserves, I also put them on some savory bread I made this weekend with squash and feta. It seems that fig preserves taste delicious on everything.

-I bought "Good to the Grain" by Kim Boyce for my sister's birthday and while I haven't had the pleasure of sitting down with it and perusing, I expect her to make the Buckwheat Figgy Scones and send me the recipe. One of the steps has you make FIG BUTTER with port and red wine. How can that not sell you?

-I have a fig tree on the corner of my street. It seems largely untended and generally unloved. It's not very nice to ignore perfectly good figs so sometimes I will pick one or two. There really is nothing better than taking a walk in the morning on your day off, grabbing a few fresh figs and sitting on the porch in the sun while you eat them. Perfection.

Cheese(s) of the Week

Enjoyed an evening of cheese and wine last night with the inimitable Mary Beth aka best roommate ever. It was so nice to spend one of these cool, early fall evenings with good company and these delectable selections.

Bucherondine: Reminds me of Humboldt Fog (mmm!) with the ultra-creamy goat cheese center, surrounded by a runnier layer.

Appalachiam Tomme: Never heard of this, sort of a cross between cheddar and Gruyere? This would make a super grilled cheese.

Roth Kase Gruyere Surchoix: Oh my. Nutty, with those little crystals that I love so much.