Adjusting To Ina And More Olive Oil Matters

Barefoot Contessa with Ina Garten

Cook Like A Pro

Lemon Chicken Breasts

Sticky Toffee Date Cake

Baked Fontina

Daniel Boulud's Light Mayonnaise

Ina starts off with Lemon Chicken Breasts which she says was one of the most popular dishes at her store. She adds that she needed lots of simple recipes that were big on flavor. (I love hearing about the old days, but, oh dear, Ina sounds hoarse. Poor Contessa. She needs some tea with honey…immediately.) 

For the Lemon Chicken, she pours in a quarter cup of olive oil. I’m thinking that’s A LOT of olive oil, but it wouldn’t be an Ina recipe without adjusting the amount of fat somewhat. She chops nine cloves of garlic, which she says will give you 3 tablespoons. 

(If you follow my kitchen creed and remove the green stem in the middle of the garlic clove, you can throw in an extra one to make up for the waste. But, frankly, 8 gutted garlic cloves are probably more than enough.)

Ina adds the garlic to the oil and cooks it for just a minute and adds 1/3 cup of white wine. (She actually measured it.) Then she adds a tablespoon of zested lemon rind. (She calls the microplaner she’s working with a rasper, which is not out of place with the way her voice is sounding. “Rasper” always makes me think of a survivor on a desert island in great need of water.)

Ina tells us to make sure to zest the lemon before you squeeze it. That may sound a bit basic, but there HAVE been times when I forgot I needed the zest and it was annoying to have to zest a brand new lemon.

Lemon, olive oil and garlic are three ingredients that Ina works with all the time. My all-time favorite recipe of hers (and possibly my all-time favorite recipe of ANYONE’S) is basically roasted vegetables, which are mixed with orzo and then dressed with fresh lemon juice and olive oil. It’s so interesting how the same basic components can be combined in different ways to come up with so many different recipes.

Back to the Lemon Chicken, Ina adds the lemon zest (lots) and fresh lemon juice. She uses a reamer, which has become my favorite way to juice a lemon.

Ina reminds us of one of her “things”, when she talks about using dried oregano. She thinks that fresh oregano is too strong, so it's one herb she always uses dried.

I love learning about cooks' “things”, which are those tips or tricks they hold to be self-evident and even if there is no scientific proof, they still cling to them. One of my biggest “things” is my garlic clove obsession. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. (And I’m not talking about lettuce). I have many others: 

I keep my onions in the fridge, so I cry less.

 This is one you’ve heard from me over and over – cook any warm spices in oil for at least 2 minutes (3 is better) over low heat to get rid of any rawness and to develop the flavor, before you add the liquid to the recipe.

 I always sift baking powder and baking soda through a tea strainer. I don’t bother with the flour, but the leavening can be nasty if you get lumps.

 I always cut both ends off any vegetable I’m peeling or cutting. I can’t think of one exception.

 I always toast nuts (usually in the microwave) when using them for just about anything.

 When using seltzer in a mixed drink, I always pour it in first. It mixes better that way. (You didn’t know who you were dealing with, did you?)

Okay, back to Ina’s “thing”, she adds the dried oregano after rubbing it into her palms. Then fresh thyme goes in and then 1 teaspoon of salt. I’m thinking that’s a bit more salt than you need, but it wouldn't be an Ina recipe without adjusting the amount of salt somewhat. Start with ½ teaspoon, taste the sauce and go from there.

Ina gets her butcher to take the bones out of the chicken. Does anyone even HAVE a butcher anymore…especially for chicken? The chicken goes on top of the sauce. She says if you put the sauce on top of the chicken, it won’t brown. Good point.

You can get it ready up to that point and stick it back in the fridge, which is a great idea for getting the prep out of the way and adding even more flavor to the chicken.

But, boy, it would take a lot of self-control not to spoon at least a LITTLE of the sauce on the top. Oh! Ina says to brush the top with a bit of olive oil. 

(Ina is not brushing a BIT of oil over. She’s holding the bottle of olive oil over the dish and basically pouring it onto the brush. That’s great kitchen hygiene, because the chickened-up brush isn’t touching anything but the chicken, BUT she’s kind of letting the oil flow over the chicken in a free-form way).

What’s our mantra today? I’m thinking that’s a bit more oil than you need, but it wouldn’t be an Ina recipe without adjusting the amount of fat somewhat. (That’s even more reason to go a little lighter on the amount of oil in the sauce. I would cut down the amount of oil in the sauce from 4 tablespoons, or ¼ cup, to maybe a heavy 2 tablespoons.)

Ina adds a lemon cut into 8 wedges to the pan and it goes into a 400°F oven for 30 to 40 minutes. She lets it sit for 10 minutes and “that’s about as easy as dinner gets”. She serves it with basmati rice and steamed green beans. She adds salt (too much) and pepper to the string beans and then she serves up a plate with the sauce and a lemon wedge. She loves it.

Next Ina is in the kitchen with her friend Laura Donnelly, the pastry chef at The Living Room. (That sounds homey.) They’re making a Sticky Toffee Date Cake together. They chop up 1 pound of dates and put them in a pot. Gosh, that’s a lot. They add 3½ cups of water to the dates and bring that to a boil.

Ina beats up 2 sticks of room temperature butter with ¾ cup sugar. Ina says she’s really “big on being accurate” when she’s baking. She actually explains HOW to measure in a very simple and clear way…that I didn’t even think needed explaining.  Ina says to “overfill (the cup) and then level it off”.  She does use a finger and not a knife, but whatever…

Oh! She tells Laura that accurately measuring stuff is her “thing”. That’s just what I was talking about…

Ina adds 4 eggs, one at a time, to the running mixer. She beats in vanilla, flour and salt. Laura adds 2 teaspoons of baking soda to the boiled dates. It foams up. The date mixture gets added to the mixer with baking powder. That’s a huge amount of baking powder – 3 1/4 tablespoons! Lets see that again. Yup, she definitely said that…three and a quarter TABLESPOONS and that IS what the recipe says. 

The batter gets poured into buttered and floured pans and baked at 350°F for 30 to 40 minutes. Laura says no parchment is necessary on the bottom. I don’t see how it could hurt. Laura also says you can make the cake in 8 or 9 inch pans OR in muffin tins.

A toffee mixture, which Laura brings it from the restaurant, gets poured over the cake. But how do you make it? Laura shows us from the kitchen of the restaurant. Does that mean it takes industrial equipment to make it? 

Laura melts 1/2 pound of butter in a pot, adding 8 oz. of brown sugar and ½ cup cream and vanilla. Yum! She brings it to the boil, cooks it for a minute and it’s done.

Wait a sec! Vanilla extract alert! Here’s another one of my “things”. I NEVER boil vanilla and I’d love to know why Laura is. It makes it bitter and burns off a lot of the flavor, which is what you’re paying for. The sauce does look phenomenal. She heats it up.

Ina and Laura unmold the cakes onto plates. They each have their own. They poke lots of holes into the cake and pour over the sauce. It looks amazing. Ina LOVES it. She has to go in a second time just to make sure it’s good.

Ina goes to The Red Cat restaurant to show us their Baked Fontina dish. 1 1/2 pounds of diced Italian fontina (that’s even more than the dates!) goes into a cast iron pan. Use the Italian fontina, she says. Drizzle over ¼ cup of olive oil and add 6 shaved cloves of garlic, thyme leaves, rosemary, kosher salt and pepper. Broil the fontina for 6 minutes and voila. Ina says you can serve it lots of ways. She likes it for a winter lunch with salad and bread. Jimmy Bradley, the chef, comes over to chat. He seems nice.

It’s time for Ask Ina. I don’t love this. Good! She’s jazzing it up this week. SHE’S asking the pro's questions.

First one: “What's the one thing you can do at home to cook like a pro?” Make a reservation? Oh, maybe not. 

Kevin Penner, Executive Chef of 1770 House has good advice. He says to make your own stock. (Of course, that’s great advice. But whenever I do, I hoard it and never want to use it.)

Daniel Boulud’s advice is to make your own “light” mayonnaise, using a cooked egg. Poach an egg in vinegar water for two to three minutes. (The vinegar sets up the white quickly…that’s from me.) Put it in a blender with a tablespoon of mustard, a tablespoon of red wine vinegar and a cup of peanut oil and seasoning at the end. Okay, that sounds like excellent mayonnaise, but what’s light about it?

Now INA is answering our questions. Oh darn, I liked hearing from the chefs.

Kirby wants to know how to find “really good olive oil”. That’s an easy one. Taste lots of extra virgin olive oils and buy what you like. (Easy for me to say with a friend in the olive oil business.)

Let’s see what Ina says. Hey, she’s not saying anything too different from what I said. Buy 5 different oils, she says, and then taste them. She has chunks of bread, which she’s using to taste the oil. Remember when I did that? After I’d eaten almost an entire baguette, I read that you’re supposed to taste olive oil by the spoonful WITHOUT the bread.

Ina says when you get a nice round flavor with no bitterness, THAT’S your olive oil. Nope, I disagree. I believe a really great extra virgin olive oil should catch you in the back in the throat and BE a bit bitter. That tells me it’s the closest to the original olives hanging on the tree.

When you taste a supermarket, very pale colored, regular “light tasting” olive oil, THEN you get a balanced, bland taste. Who wants that? You should get a distinctive taste from your extra virgin olive oil. I could recognize mine blind-folded, (I think) and it should grab you, not caress you.

The next question is from Kim. She actually took the time to ask Ina the difference between Kosher salt and table salt. Gawd!!! Obviously, one it in a round container and one is in a rectangular box! :-)  

Ina says regular table salt has chemicals in it to keep it free flowing. She says that makes it taste bitter. She finds Kosher salt “softer”. (She doesn’t say what brand she uses.) She also uses flakes of sea salt. They’re softer too, with a briny taste. The third salt she uses is fleur de sel for finishing.

At some point, I read that we should keep chemical-ed Kosher salt out of our kitchen. I checked mine. It was Morton’s and it did have “yellow prussiate of soda” in it. I replaced it with David’s and, guess what? I HATED it. The flavor was awful for some reason, so I kept using Morton’s for cooking and now I use David’s only for scrubbing pots.

Last question. How do you maintain the bright green in vegetables? IF THESE PEOPLE CAN USE COMPUTERS TO “ASK INA”, WHY CAN’T THEY JUST GOOGLE IT AND LET INA GET BACK TO HER SWEET DATE TOFFEE CAKE?

Ina (and every other kitchen practitioner in the universe) tells us to cook the veggies first in boiling salted water and then plunge them into ice water to stop the cooking. Before serving, sauté in a bit of olive oil. 

That was a bit of an anticlimactic end to a pretty good episode. I hope Ina takes care of herself, though. She needs to rest her voice, so she can proclaim “How easy is that!” without straining herself. 

Black Forest S'Mores And People Say The Darnedest Things

I recently discovered that someone near and dear to me had no clue what S’MORES were. Really! He (or she…no names) was reading the paper one day and asked me, “What are s’mores?” I couldn’t believe it.

After I picked myself up off the floor, I described them (as I would to an alien from outer space). I said they were two graham cracker squares, sandwiched with a melted marshmallow and a few sections of a Hershey bar.

That still didn’t ring a bell with H(usband)…Oh, SORRY, I mean the anonymous snack amateur. I said that Girl Scouts make them at camp (hence the inclusion of that word in the article he was reading). They toast the marshmallows and let the heat from them melt the chocolate, which makes the two graham cracker halves stick together.

His lack of knowledge about s’mores is all the more galling, because it’s not as if I haven’t written about them before. Last year, on National S’more Day, I posted several yummy sweet AND savory recipes. And a year before that, I invented (that’s a bit strong)…I DEVELOPED a cross between a whoopie pie and a s’more, which was an improvement on each of them (if I do say so myself).

The strange thing is that soon after this whole discussion, I found THESE in the store:

It’s amazing that it took until 2011 for some genius(es) to think of this. Of course, pillow-shaped marshmallows are perfect for s’mores!!! What a great country this is!

I couldn’t let the discovery of these brilliant marshmallows go by without making another variation on s’mores.

I call these Black Forest S’mores, but you could just as easily call them BLACK TIE S’mores, because they’re awfully fancy. I used Dove's Dark Chocolate Promises. (They're so good, they don't need that hokey name.)

First you melt the chocolate...(If you're using good quality dark chocolate, melt it before you add marshmallows.) This picture is after 30 seconds in the microwave.

Then to make them BLACK FOREST S'mores, I added a bit of cherry preserves. (These were homemade and easily made.)

Next I topped them with the marshmallows and then zapped them.

And, to finish, I covered them with chocolate-enhanced graham cracker squares.

Black Forest S’mores (makes 2)

Printable recipe here

2 rectangles of graham crackers

2 tbls. chocolate chips

Optional: 1/2 tsp. solid vegetable shortening*

2 individually wrapped Dove “promises” dark chocolate pieces

2 marshmallows

2 spoonfuls cherry preserves

Break graham crackers (carefully) into 4 squares. (I find that the hardest part.)

Prepare graham cracker tops first. Place two of the squares on wax paper. Melt chocolate chips and shortening, if using, in a small bowl in the microwave for about 45 seconds. Stir until completely smooth.

Using a fork, drizzle the chocolate diagonally over the graham crackers. Hold the fork high and start drizzling before you get to the graham crackers, so any large drips go on the waxed paper and not the graham cracker.

Place 1 piece of Dove chocolate on each of the remaining graham cracker squares. Microwave for 30 seconds. (If using chocolate chips, 10 seconds should do it.) Add 1 spoonful of cherry preserves in the middle and top with a marshmallow. Microwave for 10 seconds or until marshmallows puff up. Cover with chocolate drizzled graham cracker squares. Serve immediately.

*Yes, I mean Crisco. You don’t have to use it, but it makes the chocolate much easier to drizzle across the graham cracker. (I also add it when I’m dipping strawberries.)

For Quick Homemade Cherry Preserves:

Wash and stem cherries. Put a single layer, tightly packed, in whatever heavy-bottomed pot you want to use. The bigger the pot, the more cherries you can jam in. Add as little water as you can get away with, barely covering the bottom. Sprinkle in TONS of cinnamon, perhaps an entire tablespoon or more, really a lot! Stir and bring to a simmer, cover, turn to low and let cook for 15 minutes, stirring once or twice. Stir really well and cook for another 15 minutes, stirring once or twice.

If you were timid and added too much liquid at the beginning, uncover and simmer gently until the cherries are barely covered in a sweet glaze. Let sit in the pot until cool. Stir in a good spoonful of lemon juice. Place in a jar, cover and refrigerate. They’ll keep for a week or two, or freeze.

Note: A spoonful of brandy, added after you take the cherries off the heat to cool, would be a delightful addition. If, however, you’re using them for this s’mores recipe, then maybe hold off on the alcohol.

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PS I just encountered some unexpected controversy. I was telling a (librarian) friend about this recipe and I pronounced s’mores the way I always have – SUH-Mores. She looked aghast and said, “It’s SMORES!!!” I said there’s an accent, which indicates a minute break in the first sound, before you get to the second. She immediately called over two more librarian types, who confirmed that it was SMORES, without the second syllable. I was astounded. I ran home to check even more.

Dictionary.com was just gross. No marshmallow treats there, just this:

Smore\, v. t. To smother. See Smoor. [Obs.]

Some dying vomit blood, and some were smored. --Du Bartas.

Merriam-Webster was more on the ball. Their audio guide very clearly said "SMORE", with nary an “UH” in there. Too bad...I still feel funny saying it the “right” way.

However you say it, the recipe still hits the spot of a sweet, crunchy, chocolatey and gooey snack. And I think MY pronunciation hits the mark much more accurately of what your first reaction is after tasting one – I want SOME MORE.

Afternote: After all this, I asked H what he thought of the s'mores. He paused and then said, "I don't think I like marshmallows." Oy!

Bastille Day Rocks!

I think it’s perfectly okay to use the occasion of Bastille Day to indulge in the best that France has to offer – its food and drink. There are more active pursuits, of course, like marching in a parade or running in a Waiter’s Race (if you’re a waiter) or practicing pétanque, but I preferred to spend the day in the kitchen. Actually, that’s usually my favorite place, no matter which holiday I'm celebrating.

I made an Herbed Blueberry Champagne Cocktail.

For two glasses of champagne, place ¼ cup of rinsed blueberries and a couple sprigs of fresh herbs in a bowl.

Actually, many different herbs could be used. Mint would probably be the best, but any with a flowery scent are good. Lemon Balm would be lovely. Thyme is interesting. I used sage, because I had no mint handy and it had a slightly minty scent. It worked beautifully.

Muddle the blueberry with the herbs. I used a meat pounder, because I get far too little use out of it.

Put a few spoonfuls of the crushed blueberries and herbs in the bottom of each champagne glass. Pour over champagne. Garnish with some fresh blueberries and a sprig of whatever herb you used.

One caveat – Don’t muddle the herbs and blueberries until just before using. The flavor intensifies upon standing and you want just a subtle herbal tinge to the champagne.

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I also decided to make Coquilles St. Jacques. This is an old-fashioned version, which is always fantastic. But I wanted to lighten things up a bit. So instead of engulfing the scallops in a velouté sauce, I poached them and put them NUDE into the ramekins.

I covered half with mashed potatoes and half with puréed cauliflower, which is meant to be a mashed potato substitute*. It does a pretty good job, except it’s A LOT thinner and so you can’t get the usual scallops or stars out of the mixture. In fact, you’re lucky if you can get the mashed cauliflower into a piping bag at all, without it all leaking out. I did manage to get a bit of a design out of the cauliflower.

Here is the recipe for my Bastille Day Scallops.

You can also assemble them in shells, which is the classic approach, but I knew I was going to have a reheating situation, so I opted for ramekins, which could be quickly zapped.

I hope you enjoyed whatever you did (or ate) today. Vive La France! I’ll drink to that.

*I’m staying away from white potatoes, because I’m beginning to believe all those websites (that are the equivalent of 3 am infomercials), which say that nightshade vegetables are bad for bum knees. Actually, I do believe that avoiding them had gotten rid of a lot of aches and pains. And I don't really mind if it's all in my head, as long as it works.

Author! Author! Bravo To Those Whoopie Pies!

I was so happy to go to a book reading of Jennifer Weiner’s hot-off-the-presses new book, Then Came You, at the Princeton Public Library this afternoon. She was funny and smart and reminded me of my best gal pals.

But I had another reason, aside from any literary pretensions, for being there. A local bakery, Sugar + Sunshine Bakery, was providing freshly baked whoopie pies and I wanted to check them out...as a kind of public service, of course. I have to give them props for making really superb ones.

There were peanut butter-filled whoopie pies...

strawberry-filled whoopie pies...

and the classic white-filled whoopie pies...

Their crumb was perfect - moist, but still cakey, without being in the least dry. I had the peanut butter one. (I really didn't want to be mowed down by book-loving, whoopie pie fanatics, so I only tried that flavor - it was the closest one to where I was standing.) The filling was creamy, but not greasy. The peanut butter flavor was pronounced, but not cloying. And there was no crumbling, so they made for very neat eating, which I'm sure the library appreciated.

It’s pretty wonderful that at each of the stops on Weiner’s book tour, the audience will be treated to locally-made whoopie pies. That’s even more reason to admire her.

Today, the appreciative audience included one person who came from Ohio and another who drove 3 hours from Pennsylvania. Weiner’s delightful presentation included hilarious anecdotes from her recent stay in Los Angeles as executive producer of State of Georgia on the ABC Family Network. (She had to explain what that was to her grandmother and why her show wasn’t on the regular ABC network.) She also admitted that everything she ever learned about making a television show she learned from Liz Lemon on 30 Rock.

But back to the food angle - Interestingly, last year Weiner’s book tour featured cupcake giveaways. This year, she changed it up and went with whoopie pies.

To be clear, when I refer to whoopie pie, I mean 2 discs of cake, sandwiched with an icing-like filling. Cupcakes, of course, have been the rage for quite a while, but there are a few reasons to think that the popularity of Whoopie Pies might be on the rise:

Whoopie Pies are much easier to eat than cupcakes. The icing is on the inside, so you don’t have the sticky hand problem (as much).

The ratio of icing (which is on the inside) to cake is much larger than with cupcakes, so each bite of a whoopie pie contains more of the best part – the filling.

You don’t have to deal with bothersome cupcake papers. Each whoopie pie stands on its own.

The NAME – whoopie pie – is much more entertaining than the slightly cutesy “cupcake”.

Whoopie pies have a pleasing flying saucer shape, which makes them suitable for parties about or for aliens.

I mentioned Jennifer Weiner’s own whoopie pie recipe here, and there are MANY great recipes out there to try.

Incidentally, I do know that the classic filling is marshmallow fluff and vegetable shortening, but unless I was making them to put into a time capsule to last 100 years, I would always go with a buttercream or 7 minute icing-type of filling.

I did an informal survey of the whoopie pie recipe landscape out there and here are some of the ones I really want to try:

A yummy inside-out version of a whoopie pie with a chocolate ganache-style filling - Reverse Whoopie Pies

Here are Delish.com’s 7 Best Whoopie Pie Recipes. I wish I had been in on the taste testing.

But some of the best recipes I’ve seen are from Donal Skehan, who had the fabulous idea of mixing nutella and peanut butter for his filling. It doesn’t hurt that he is completely and totally cute. Two of his whoopie pie recipes are here. If you need help un-metricating, drop me a line.

All in all, it was a great day with a captivating author, a good book to look forward to and an excellently executed whoopie pie.

Giada Cooks For A (Future) King

Wills and Kate arrived in Los Angeles today. Tomorrow they are lunching at the Santa Barbara Polo & Racquet Club with 3598 of their closest (new) friends. Actually, KATE will be lunching while Prince William plays in a charity polo match, which will benefit The American Friends of The Foundation of Prince William and Prince Harry.

Giada was chosen to plan the menu for this benefit event and, actually, she was onboard before she even knew that the Royals were coming. It’s particularly exciting that this is the one event on the couple's California itinerary open to the public, although ticketing is closed now. For $4000, you could meet and eat with the royals in a special VIP section. $400 would have bought you general access to the event.

I can only imagine how daunting it must have been for Giada to plan the menu after she found out who the special guests were. Here she is on The Today Show talking about the gig.

This is what she’s serving:

- Pea Pesto Crostini, featuring puréed peas on toast, topped with half a cherry tomato

- California Chopped Salad with a mix of grilled lettuces, grilled corn, grilled shrimp, zucchini and crispy tortillas in a light lemon dressing

- Chicken Milanese, breaded chicken cutlets in a creamy tomato fennel sauce

I have a couple of reservations about some of her choices.

I like the idea of the Pea Pesto. That’s inventive and could be quite tasty, but, why oh why, does it have to be served on crostini? I’ve written before about how I hate the idea of eating bruschetta (OR crostini…same difference) in a public setting. 

First of all, the topping can fall off easily, especially if it’s the ubiquitous chopped tomato. This Pea Pesto will stick better, but gravity could still have its way with the little bits on top of the bread.  How elegant is that for a Prince or Princess to have to deal with? And even worse, there's still the nasty chomping required to bite a piece of crusty bread in half. If you’re being introduced to a Prince or Princess, do you really want to be seen biting an ungainly chunk of food and worrying that you’ll get some schmutz on your own (or someone else’s) finery?

If Giada wanted to go with the pea theme, why couldn’t she have topped tiny (one bite) tarts with Pea Pesto? Or offered a pea soup (remember mine for Cynthia?) in little shot glasses? And if she was so desperate to make crostini, she could have chopped them up into croutons and put them in the pea soup.

I love the sound of the California Chopped Salad with all the local grilled ingredients. Plus a chopped salad is particularly easy to eat when you’re with folks you want to impress. (It’s one of the few things that I’ve advised my table manners-challenged son he would be safe ordering during a job interview meal. Obviously no soup, no spaghetti, no large pieces of animal protein that require proper handling of a knife and fork and no burp-producing beverages should be ordered.)

Anyway, back to reality, I mean royalty, I’m interested in why Giada thought of serving Chicken Milanese. It’s kind of a throwback dish and doesn’t really say southern California or young, hip royalty. Is it possible she was told they don’t like exotic foods?

There are so many other roads she could have taken. She could have served Smoked & Braised Natural Short Ribs with preserved meyer-lemon spinach and smokey jus OR Grilled Gulf Prawns with crispy garlic, basil, orange & calabrian chili dressing and heirloom toscanelli white beans OR Wild Sea Scallops with capers, grapes, parsnips and a rosemary brown butter sauce.

Okay, that’s cheating. I’m just reciting from Michael Chiarello’s Bottega menu. To me, his dishes just sound more important. (This is funny. MC serves his Garlic & Calabrian Chili Roasted Dungeness Crab with BRUSCHETTA. But I don’t object to that, because you’re sitting down with a knife and a fork to tackle it, not eating while on the fly.)

But this isn’t a restaurant. It’s a luncheon at a polo match and I’m sure there are plenty of limitations imposed by the space and conditions. I have no doubt that Giada will do fabulously tomorrow. She’ll look gorgeous; she’ll represent our American persona with grace and congeniality; and Kate and Will will love the food (or act as if they do).

But one last question – what’s for dessert?

We had a lovely Independence Day with friends E and F. We called it a barbecue, although the only things that even had barbecue in their name were the potato chips. (Lay's...really good.)

I made the Key Lime Pie, pictured above.

It was the first Emeril recipe I ever used and the hundreds of overwhelmingly positive comments convinced me to try it. (I LOVE the folks that take the time to do that.) It was a good choice! (As many folks did, I substituted whipped cream for sour cream on the top.)

We started out with white sangria and mozzarella topped with plums in a balsamic vinegar reduction.

This was the recipe from the always wonderful resource of Food52. I’m not swearing I used buffalo mozzarella, though.

One word of warning - keep the children, pets (and complaining husbands) away as you reduce the vinegar. I wouldn't call it "toxic" like someone did, but it is a bit of a strong sensation. Also, next time, I will absolutely add some sugar to the vinegar to cut a bit of the sharpness, but the combination of the plums with the vinegar and mozzarella was inspired. I served it with a rosemary foccaccia.

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I keep playing with my white sangria recipe:

This is my latest version:

White Sangria (serves 3 or 4, or an enthusiastic 2)

Printable recipe here

2 oranges

2 limes

handful of strawberries, cut into small pieces

1 tbl. sugar

½ cup orange juice

2 tbls. Grand Marnier

1 bottle Pinot Grigio or other white wine

1 cup Diet 7-up

Squeeze the juice of one orange into a pitcher. Add squeezed-out halves to pitcher. (You’ll remove them before serving.) Cut the other orange up into small pieces. Add to pitcher. Do the same with the two limes – squeeze one into the pitcher and cut one up into small pieces. Add it all to the pitcher. Add strawberries. Stir in sugar, orange juice, Grand Marnier and the bottle of wine. Chill for at least an hour, three hours is better. Remove squeezed-out orange and lime halves.

Just before serving, stir in Diet 7-up.

Note: You KNOW I don’t cook with junky foods, but this little bit of diet soda makes the sangria just sweet enough without having to add a lot more sugar. If you’re bothered by it, just add seltzer, but don’t say I didn’t tell you it wouldn’t be quite sweet enough.

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Crab cakes were on the menu with sautéed peppers and red onions.

(Just sauté slivered colored peppers and red onions in a bit of olive oil over medium high heat with gobs of cumin.)

I served the crab cakes with a chili lime mayonnaise. One note – I wish I had added a finely chopped jalapeño to the crab cake mixture and some chopped-up mango or peach…or nectarine maybe. I would have liked a hint of sweetness with some heat. I also (I’m just thinking out loud now) could have served it with a fruity salsa, maybe like this one.

Crab Cakes (makes 8)

Printable recipe here

1 lb. crab meat, picked through

2 stalks celery, finely chopped

2 eggs

2 tsps. Worcestershire

1 tsp. bay seasoning

¼ tsp. cayenne

2 tablespoons Dijon

3 tbls. parsley, chopped

1 cup panko

1 tsp. Kosher salt

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons oil

Chili Lime Mayonnaise

¾ cup mayonnaise (Hellman’s is fine)

Juice of one lime

2 tsps. chili powder

Stir crab meat and celery together in medium bowl.

Beat eggs in small bowl. Stir in next four ingredients. Stir egg mixture into crab. Add parsley and panko and stir well. Using a third cup measure, form into 8 individual crab cakes. Cover and refrigerate until ready to cook. They can be made 8 hours ahead.

For Chili Lime Mayonnaise, mix all ingredients together.

Stir mayonnaise, lime juice and chili powder together. Refrigerate until ready to use.

To cook crab cakes, fry in butter and oil on medium heat until nicely browned on each side, about 7 to 8 minutes total.

Serve with chili lime mayonnaise.

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I also made a Charlie Trotter salad, which is similar to this, but without the canola oil, of course, and with pomegranates and toasted walnuts. Email me for the recipe.

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My friend, Molly, gave me a fabulous recipe that jazzes up any olives you have available. She wasn’t sure where it came from, so if this is YOUR recipe, please let me know and I’ll give you full credit.

(I used the whole stalk of rosemary, instead of chopping it up.)

Molly’s Olives

2 cups assorted olives

2 cloves garlic, peeled and lightly crushed

2 tbls. extra virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon fresh rosemary leaves

1/2 lemon, cut in half and segmented like a grapefruit

Toss all ingredients together in a bowl. Marinate for an hour or longer at room temperature. (Remove from the refrigerator an hour or two before serving.) Yield 4 servings.

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I had to make “MY” extra special brownies too.

I hope you had a wonderful weekend with family and friends and saluted America with some patriotic (or just plain good) food.

There were some Gardenburgers too.