Tag Archives: olive oil

Repurposing Mustard

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Mustard isn’t just a condiment for sandwiches anymore.  Use it to make a sauce for poultry or, as I’ve recently discovered, make a delightful salad dressing.

I’m in love with the mixed greens I pick up at the farmer’s market every sunday, but the basic olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing was getting a little old.

Enter a mustard vinaigrette recipe, courtesy of foodnetwork.com.  The ingredients are simple, and you probably already have most, if not all, on hand.

  • 1 garlic clove, sliced in 1/2
  • 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
  • 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
  • Small splash soy sauce
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • 3 tablespoons olive oil

The directions are seemingly easy, unless you have trouble simultaneously patting your head and rubbing your belly…

Rub the inside of a large wooden bowl with the garlic clove and then either discard it or save it for another use. Put the mustard in the bowl and whisk in the balsamic vinegar and soy sauce (a French secret!) vigorously for about 10 seconds to get a creamy consistency. Season with salt and pepper, to taste. Drizzle in the olive oil as slowly as possible with 1 hand while whisking as quickly as possible with the other hand to emulsify. Lay the salad greens on top of the dressing and toss just before serving.

With my whisk in one hand and the little prep bowl of olive oil in the other, I found myself viciously whisking in the olive oil like a madwoman.  When I slowed for a break, I could see the oil and vinegar beginning to separate, at which point I proceeded to whisk even more energetically.  All while trying to slowly pour in the olive oil.  So worth the strenuous hand-eye coordination test.  The result is a perfectly balanced not too watery but not too creamy vinaigrette.

Since I only had a little more than a cup of mixed greens left in my fridge (what am I going to do until I can get more on Sunday?!), I poured about a third of the dressing into another bowl and tossed in the greens.  Topped with sunflower seeds, I had myself a light, tangy and very addicting salad:

Dijon mustard in itself has quite a kick to it.  But mixed with the balsamic vinegar, olive oil and soy sauce, it’s somehow extremely tamed and works with, not against, its fellow ingredients.  Best of all, I was done in 5 minutes:)

5 Minute Arugula Salad

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A 5 minute salad with less than 10 ingredients.  Which really is another way of saying I had a lot of random stuff in my fridge and zero time to make dinner.

It was late, and I needed dinner–fast.  I opened up my fridge and grabbed what I could find:
1. Arugula
2. Avocado
3. Brown mushrooms
4.  A block of parmesan cheese

All I did was slice up the avocado and mushrooms, grated the parmesan, tossed everything into a large bowl and mixed in:

5. Toasted pine nuts
6. Balsamic Vinegar
7. Olive Oil
8. Salt & Pepper (ok so this might be 2, but it still leaves me under 10 ingredients;))

I scooped everything into a bowl, grabbed a fork, and dinner was done.  Check out this beauty:

Arugula is my new favorite leafy green.  It has a nice nutty taste.  I find most greens have zero flavor.  I’ve also been using it in sandwiches in place of the standard (cough boring cough) iceberg or romaine.  Best way I’ve found to store these greens…I keep them in the plastic bag I got them in from the farmer’s market, gently press out as much air as possible, and loosely tie it shut.  I’ve been able to keep the arugula crisp and still tasty in the crisper drawer in my fridge even after 2 weeks (possibly longer).

Rosemary and Garlic Chicken with Heirloom Potatoes

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I can’t say it enough.  I’m obsessed with the farmer’s market, and every Sunday, I usually end up picking up things that looked pretty, but I had no idea what I was going to do with them.

Enter my latest find: heirloom potatoes.  Schlepping my big canvas bag packed full of goodies around the market, a few colorful potatoes caught the corner of my eye.  I grabbed some purple and yellow potatoes simply because they looked cool.  But I really had no meal in mind.

Then something clicked.  I also had a handful of sprigs of rosemary.  Bingo.  Rosemary potatoes.  But hey, let’s make it a meal and throw in some chicken too.

I started out by adding a few sprigs of rosemary, a few cloves of chopped garlic, salt, pepper, chopped onions and the beautiful heirloom potatoes to a large mixing bowl, drizzled with a generous amount of olive oil:

I learned this time saving, non-crying-inducing method of chopping onions, which is absolutely brilliant.  Start out by cutting the onion in half from top to bottom (i.e. not horizontally):

Lay the flat end on the cutting board and slice off the top.  Next is where the tricks begin.  Make thin slices through the onion, but leaving about an inch or so uncut towards the bottom part of the onion:

Once you’ve made enough slices through the onion from one side to the other, carefully make similar sized slices horizontally through the onion, again stopping about an inch from the bottom:

And finally, just start chopping straight down into the onion, and voila, perfectly chopped onions with very little effort and zero tears:

I added the chicken drumsticks into the mixing bowl, added even more olive oil, and tossed well.  Next, I dumped everything into a baking dish, covered with foil, and baked at 400° (I have absolutely no idea how long I cooked it for, since I forgot to set a timer.  I just kept an eye on the chicken until it was thoroughly cooked).

It wasn’t particularly flavorful right out of the oven.  But I still had a ton of leftovers, so I saved it and put it in the fridge.  After a day of sitting in all of the rosemary, garlic and olive oil, the chicken was significantly more tasty the second day.  Next time, I’m throwing everything into a large freezer bag and letting it sit overnight before cooking.  Hopefully that will make it taste just as good the day I cook it:)

Chicago the Musical: The Closest I’ve Been to the Midwest

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A friend and I caught a matinee showing of Chicago playing at the Pantages Theater, and of course lunch was involved!  We decided on a small Italian restaurant a block south of the theater called Fabiolus.  The restaurant is cozy, with every inch of wall space covered with any given Italian-themed poster.

To start, we had the bruschetta di pomodoro.  The bread was drizzled with olive oil, topped with chopped tomatoes, basil and creamy fresh mozzarella:

These guys don’t just throw some bread on your table to tide you over.  There is a small bowl of this mouth-watering olive pesto tapenade to spread on the bread:

Since the portions are ginormous, we split a pasta dish–fusilli alla ricotta with eggplant and toasted walnuts in this amazing cream sauce that isn’t too thick or too thin (I usually don’t like cream sauces, and I enjoyed this particular one):

We were far too stuffed to have dessert (unfortunately!  They had some fantastic sounding options), so we headed for the theater.  The show was dazzling, even from the cheap seats in the back (literally.  The very. last. row.)  I always love walking into the Pantages…it’s one of my favorite theaters out here.  It’s a stunning historic art deco theater that had a serious overhaul back in 2000 (I think…).

Here is the lobby:

And us after the show:

Not too shabby for a beautiful spring afternoon in LA:)

Roasted Tomato, Basil & Goat Cheese Pizza on Focaccia Dough

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I stopped by Fresh & Easy with the sole intent of picking up plain pizza dough to make a standard cheese pizza.  But what I found next to the plain dough changed my entire dinner plans.  Enter the pre-made rosemary focaccia dough.

Rosemary.  It was love at first smell.  So it’sonly fitting that I picked up the rosemary dough over the plain dough.  I decided to go with goat cheese, but wasn’t quite sure what else to add.  While standing wide-eyed in front of the cheese section, I caught a glimpse of something bright red in the corner of my eye.  They had a small tub of roasted tomatoes, soaking in oil and spices.  Genius.

My previous attempt at pizza left me with a soggier-than-I-would-have-liked pizza.  An obvious change this time around was not to over soak the dough with sauce.  I also love a thin and crispy crust, so I ventured to Target and picked up a basic pizza stone.  Greatest 10 bucks I’ve ever spent.

I kneaded and stretched the dough out into a decent sized attempt at a circle over a cookie sheet while the pizza stone was heating up in the oven.  I then drizzled olive oil over the dough, and spread a small stick of goat cheese over the dough.  Finally, I topped it all off with the tomato slices.

I was too hungry and excited to eat this, I didn’t quite think it all the way through.  Transferring the very thin pizza from the cookie sheet to the hot pizza stone proved a little difficult.  Note to self: put the tomatoes on after the dough has made it to the stone.  Notice the extra ball of dough on the cookie sheet.  I threw this onto the pizza stone after making the pizza and out came a delicious piece of focaccia.  It went great with a bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar:)

Without too many tomatoes falling off the pizza, I successfully made the transfer.  I let it bake in the oven at 475° for about 12 minutes.  I had picked up some fresh basil at the farmer’s market this Sunday, and threw on a few leaves after the pizza was done.  What we have here is essentially a slight twist on a margherita pizza (sans tomato sauce):

The verdict?  The dough is to die for.  The tomatoes are bursting with flavor.  Fresh basil is always refreshing.  But going completely sauce free makes for a slightly dry pizza.  Drizzling more olive oil onto the cooked slices helped this ever so slightly, but next time I’m definitely adding just a little bit of sauce.

And an added bonus to tonight’s dinner – mint lemonade!  Along with the fresh basil, I also picked up a bunch of incredibly fragrant mint at the farmer’s market.  I muddled a few leaves in the bottom of a glass and poured in some lemonade.  Refreshing and delicious.  Perfection.