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Two celebrities have new(ish) cooking shows on The Food
Network and one fantastic real life chef has a new book out.
I happened upon Valerie Bertinelli, because one of her
dishes sounded really interesting.
It’s funny how just giving something a new name makes it seem…well,
new. I had never heard of “Cauliflower Steaks” until I saw her new
offering on
The Food Network.
Everybody loves Valerie Bertinelli from that long ago sitcom
with Bonnie Franklin. Quick! What was the name of that show? Oooh, I need a minute. Family Ties? No. Who’s the Boss? No.
I completely forgot. OH, it was
One Day At A Time. Oh well…
Anyway, this is nifty. The idea is that you cut 2, or
possibly 3 if it’s huge, thick slices from the center of a cauliflower. That
gives you “steaks”, which are roasted in the oven with the usual addition of
olive oil, salt and pepper. Basically
it’s roasted cauliflower, but in a slab.
It’s great for a main course type of thing for veggie
lovers. Valerie tops it with pine nuts and yellow raisins. But depending on
what else you’re making, anything goes. I’m thinking it would be good with
polenta and tomato sauce. Or how about making curried vegetables (without the
cauliflower) and serving those ON TOP OF the cauliflower steak with yellow
rice? Here was my effort. I was being cheap and tried to get 3 steaks
out of one normal sized cauliflower. Don’t do that. Go for it and cut it THICK.
And, PS, I've made this several times and when you cut the cauliflower
properly, I like it cooked longer than the 25 minutes Valerie says. In fact, I turned down the oven to 400°F.
and cooked it another entire half hour and it came out great.
Valerie suggests making a
cauliflower
crusted pizza out of the remaining cauliflower. Now THAT idea has been
around for a while. I do like her recipe though, because it’s relatively low in
cheese and she uses only one egg. But
I steam my cauliflower first (Valerie’s
is raw) and there's no taste of cauliflower in the finished crust…which is a
good thing.
I wonder if hers tastes more cauliflower-y. Also Valerie doesn’t
mention that the crust comes out like a thin vegetable omelet, not that there’s
anything wrong with that...
By the way, after I
looked into it a bit, there are a mere 609,000 results for Cauliflower Steaks
on Google. I guess it’s like the time I thought I had invented Carrot
Vichyssoise. I actually DID, though. It’s not my fault that scads of people had
the same idea before me, including the world famous Four Seasons.
What’s important is that IN MY MIND it was a totally new idea to add carrots to
vichyssoise. Sooo I’m willing to give Valerie credit for the Cauliflower Steaks,
even if more than half a million people thought of it before her.
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Marilu Henner is very cool with her
amazing memory, so I
thought her cooking show might be fun. Imagine never having to write down every
little variation you make to a recipe. You just remember! I’m not sure if it
really works like that, but she is an enthusiastic cook (AND person).
The only bad thing is that as I was watching, there was a
promo for Patricia Heaton’s new cooking show. Here I am with one celebri-cook
and they’re pitching yet another. It makes me feel like a chump that
I’m falling for this. However, it does follow that professional performers
would do a good job on a cooking show (provided they know how to cook, of
course). They can play to a camera and an audience and keep things
moving. And I’d like to think that it’s hard to fool folks if you really can’t
cook.
Back to Marilu. It appears that the show is filmed in her
real house. (Her countertops are those small square tiles that people like to
rip out because the grout is so hard to clean, but they do look festive.) I
like Marilu’s idea of “modular cooking”. She makes lots of bits and pieces that
people can put together as they like.
Apparently, her signature breakfast dish is crepes.
Interesting. This may sound strange, but I have never made (or HAD) crepes FOR
BREAKFAST. My favorite crepe recipe is an old Julia Child one that I always
serve for dinner. You make a bunch of crepes and you get two (or more)
contrasting savory fillings ready – often made from leftovers. Chicken in a
mushroom sauce and sautéed peppers in a tomato sauce are two good examples. You
layer the crepes in a medium soufflé dish, alternating the fillings. Then you
cover the whole thing in a beautiful bring-it-all-together béchamel sauce – adding
cheese if you want. Bake it and serve it in wedges. It’s really divine and
there’s no reason you couldn’t serve it at brunch. I just never have.
Marilu has two good looking crepe pans ready, so that’s
promising. She makes the batter in a blender and uses it immediately. Oy, it really
should sit overnight or at least a few hours. As
Julia taught us, the
flour absorbs the liquid and then swells and softens the mixture. The crepes
turn out lighter and tenderer. (More tender?)
Marilu says to make the crepes on
the thin side. (At The Cordon Bleu, we were told our crepes had to be thin
enough to read our love letters through.) Marilu seems to pour in way too much batter and doesn’t
twirl the pan quickly enough to thin them out. They do look nice in the end, but
they aren't that delicate. She IS feeding a house of young men, though, so I would
imagine a thicker crepe is not going to offend them. She also makes turkey
bacon, which looks completely factory-fabricated. I always go for either
totally real bacon or totally fake bacon. If I’m not going make the real stuff,
then I love this fake bacon. (It will be in some refrigerated section or other
in your supermarket.)
It's
REALLY GOOD. And I often make it in the microwave. It looks as fake as turkey
bacon, but it tastes really bacon-y! And no animal had to be involved in its
production.
With the crepes, Marilu serves chicken sausages, jellies and
her fake bacon with bananas and little mandarin oranges. Oh, and warm syrup. The
guys love it all.
Marilu touts her guacamole. I’m wondering if there’s some
special spin to it. But I bet it’s really good. Why? Because it has exactly the
same ingredients as mine, just in different quantities.
Here’s her
recipe for guacamole. My guac recipe comes from the fabulous
World
Food Café cookbook. It’s not mine to give here, but please email me for the
recipe.
All in all, I like Marilu’s recipes. She’s entertaining and pleasant
to watch, as is Valerie. They’re not breaking a lot of new ground here, but I’m
happy to have learned (as half the planet already knew) about Cauliflower
Steaks. And I really do have to try crepes for breakfast sometime…after resting
the batter though.
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Yotam Ottolenghi has a new book out, which he talked about
on
CBS
This Morning. It looks stunning. He co-wrote it with the head chef of his
NOPI restaurant in London, Ramael Scully. I love fusion cuisine and what I find fascinating about Chef Scully is that his
own personal history is an exemplification of that. He was born in Malaysia and
grew up in Australia. His father is Irish and Balinese and his mother is of Indian
and Chinese heritage. Wow! What a combo!
Apparently, one of things that
Ottolenghi counseled Scully about was the number of elements he put on the
plate. Ottolenghi told him there were too many. Well, with THAT varied a culinary
pedigree, it’s easy to imagine Chef Scully wanting to include
components from the many different traditions he was familiar with. He did
winnow down his dishes and engage in a very beneficial collaboration with
Ottolenghi and their efforts resulted in
this book.
Listen to the name of this exciting dish:
Quail With Burnt Miso Butterscotch And Pomegranate And
Walnut
Salsa.
Wowee! I want that. But could I really make it myself? I’ll
let you know when I get my hands on this gorgeous book. For right now, I’m happy to know
that such intriguing combinations exist in the world of food.
