Dancing Spoon

Smoked Salmon Roll

Ordinary Out of the

OOO by Kate Krukowski Gooding
Smoked Salmon Rolled in Pistachios
An easy and great holiday favorite! The pistachio is a seed fruit originating in Persia. The 20-foot tall trees thrive in stony and poor soil, high heat and little or no rainfall. To date, Iran boasts a 700-year-old tree still living. The pistachio’s first archaeological findings date back to 6760 B.C. in the Palaeozoic period, presently called Jordan. This nut was first brought to the United States in 1854 and the first commercially usable crop harvested in 1976. Pistachio production in the U.S. has increased rapidly since then because of high domestic demand.

Much of pistachio history reflects the “royal character,” endurance and pride. Especially fine pistachios are said to have been a favorite delicacy of the Queen of Sheba, who confiscated all Assyrian deliveries for herself and for her royal court.

Smoked Salmon Rolled in Pistachios
Ingredients 

15 ounces canned pink salmon, flaked with no bones
8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1 ¼ cup shredded white cheddar cheese
2 tablespoon minced yellow onion
1 tablespoon dried parsley
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon liquid smoke
½ teaspoon celery seed, ground fine
½ teaspoon garlic powder
1 cup finely chopped pistachios

Directions

1. Combine all ingredients except nuts. Shape into a log by rolling in parchment paper. Roll log in nuts before serving.

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You can find Kate Gooding's book, Black Fly Stew - Wild Maine Recipes at Foodie's Emporium! Click here.

Kate has published three cookbooks: Wild Maine Recipes and Simple Gourmet Lamb with Side Dishes and Wine Pairings. She is currently is working on her one in the Black Fly Stew series – which carries and an international flair.

More information at www.blackflystew.com

And visit Foodie's Emporium for Gourmet Ingredients!

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Holiday Feast Ideas

Season Tis the

by J. Michael Wheeler
Tasty Ideas for a Holiday Feast
Tis indeed the season to be jolly. And well-fed. Nothing puts a smile on my particular face like foods prepared with joy and love and all of those squishy feelings that make a festive meal with friends and family a pinpoint of memorable happiness. I'm becoming a pleasure zone just thinking about it!

So to spread the potential joy, I've scoured over some 300 recipes on Dancing Spoon Magazine to find some very tasty ideas for some very tasty meals. From a traditional Honey Baked Ham to Smoked Duck & Raspberry Sauce to Cranberry Crusted Salmon. Then there're the potatoes, green beans, and Brussels sprouts! To get you started on the holiday morning there are quiches, scrambled eggs, and scones! And don't forget the Cranberry Zinfandel Port Relish!

Holiday Feast Starters
Edamame Italiano!
Crab & Prawn Salad
Lentil Wakame Soup
Provençal Goat or Lamb & Bean Soup
It's a Piece of (Crab) Cake

Holiday Feast Mains
Cranberry Crusted Salmon
Honey Baked Ham
Smoked Duck & Raspberry Sauce
Filet of Beef Roast with Horseradish Cream Sauce
Sautéed Calamari
Holiday Bouillabaisse

Holiday Feast Sides
Dub Spuds (Potatoes)
Sage Green Beans
Roasted Brussels Sprouts
Roast Fennel
It's a Piece of (Crab) Cake
Cranberry Zinfandel Port Relish

Holiday Feast Brunch
Really Simple Quiche
Chef Ramsey's Scrambled Eggs
O'Reilly's Most Excellent Scones

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Happiest of Holidays!

From all of us here at Dancing Spoon, we wish you a very happy holiday season. And we've got a little present for all of our members, magazine readers, newsletter readers, and customers. Please accept this coupon for 20% off of any purchase of $75 or more on our Cuisipro, Emile Henry, Little Barrel Designs, MKS Design Handcrafted Knives, Mauviel, and Rösle lines at Foodie's Emporium. This is just for you. Use it wisely, it's good for 20% off an entire order, but only once! And it's valid for a limited time, excludes shipping, and can't be combined with other offers. Use promo code LOYALCUS. 

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Really Simple Quiche

Simplified Cooking

by J. Michael Wheeler
Really Simple Quiche
There are several techniques in cooking that I call foundation cooking. One of those is the quiche. There is nothing complicated or difficult about making a quiche.

But I hear you say, "Yes, but what about the pie crust? That’s not quick or simple!”  Oh, but it is! Here’s my foolproof pie crust recipe: Go to Whole Foods Market and buy their really delicious (made with good ingredients) frozen pie crusts. You just fill the crust (still frozen) and pop it in the oven. The crust’s flaky, tender, and tasty. So we’ve got the crust out of the way, now to the filling.

Ever made a cheese omelet? A quiche is pretty much the same thing.

Chocolate (Postage) Stamps

Beyond Above and

by J. Michael Wheeler
Who Wants to Lick the Stamps?

Send your loved ones chocolate in the mail. Well, actually on the mail. In France, (where else?) food and postage are strangely blended as a .56€ first class postage stamp. These chocolate-scented postage stamps tell the story of chocolate from bean to bar in ten scented stamps.

At La Boutique Web du Timbre, the French Post Office online stamp store, the Bloc Le Chocolat is described:

Le chocolat est un aliment issu de la fève de cacao après fermentation et torréfaction. Le cacaoyer est originaire d’Amérique centrale et des forêts tropicales humides d’Amazonie. Monnaie d’échange, nourriture des Dieux, favoris des cours des grands rois, plaisir des enfants d’aujourd’hui, le chocolat est devenu un mythe dont l’histoire est retracée sur un bloc de 10 timbres traités de façon hyper réaliste. Le bloc est imprégné d’une senteur chocolat.

(Chocolate is a food derived from the cocoa bean after fermentation and roasting. The cacao tree is native to Central America and the rainforests of the Amazon. Currency exchange, food of the gods, favorite of the great kings, and joy for children of today, chocolate has become a myth whose history is traced on a block of 10 hyper realistic stamps. The block is impregnated with a chocolate scent.)

Your Bloc Le Chocolat is available at La Poste in France of course, but you can order a box, I mean a sheet, of chocolate-scented stamps online. La Boutique Web du Timbre. With stamps like these, snail mail may make a comeback: Viva la poste d'escargot!

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Got Better Tasting Milk?

Pastures Greener

by J. Michael Wheeler
Got Better Tasting Milk?
Great story/article on NPR Got (Good) Milk? Ask The Dairy Evangelist by John Burnett about  "the Che Guevara of the American dairy industry." Warren Taylor owns and runs Snowville Creamery, and he's trying to make milk the way it was made 40 years ago, when, he insists, it tasted better.

"I built Snowville Creamery to prove to the American dairy industry that the reason our children have had a 30-year continuous decline in their consumption of milk is not entirely Coke and Pepsi's fault, but because the dairy industry has been delivering a continuously declining quality of milk, in terms of its freshness and taste," Taylor says.

Taylor sells most of his milk within 48 hours, he doesn't homogenize it, and his milk is pasteurized at a lower temperature — 165 degrees. The industry standard is 175 degrees, which Taylor believes diminishes taste. Today, the popular "ultrahigh temperature" or "ultrapasteurized" milk is sterilized at 280 degrees, a process that trades flavor for long-distance marketing and long shelf life.

Listen to the Morning Edition Story Got (Good) Milk? Ask The Dairy Evangelist

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NY Times Holiday Cookbooks

Cookbooks Best

by J. Michael Wheeler
NY Times 36 Holiday Cookbooks
Summer’s over and the grilling’s no longer easy. So as Christine Muhlke of The New York Times says, “Summer’s homesteading how-to’s and grilling guides have given way to fall’s fearlessly bountiful lineup. It’s the time of year when big chefs send out their big books... It’s also the time for really useful books that will nudge you deeper into the winter kitchen to discover (or rediscover) the secret to no-brainer bread — or find out how much more your co-workers will like you if you bring in a “Naughty Senator” cake."

Here’s an amuse-bouche of Muhlke’s review, followed by the full course of books she’s laid out for our pleasure. All the books listed here are available at Foodie’s Emporium NY Times Holiday Cookbooks.
 
Muhlke begins with Thomas Keller, “...the biggest American chef with the biggest book...is a pro at translating his restaurant menus into lavish cookbooks for the advanced home cook.”  AD HOC AT HOME: Family-Style Recipes

Gordon Ramsay “has also set out to prove he can cook like the little people,” with his new COOKING FOR FRIENDS. This year’s most talked about restaurant book this year is MOMOFUKU from David Chang.

Should a diner who orders a dish called Sound of the Sea listen to an iPod playing waves? Well of course, according to Heston Blumenthal, the chef of the three-Michelin-starred Fat Duck in Bray, England. His new tome, FAT DUCK COOKBOOK  is a “lavish extravaganza.”

GOURMET TODAY: More Than 1,000 All-New Recipes for the Contemporary Kitchen, compiled by the magazine’s editor, the former New York Times food critic Ruth Reichl.

I KNOW HOW TO COOK (Je Sais Cuisiner)  was written in the early 1930s by the Sorbonne home-economics teacher Ginette Mathiot. It is the French “Joy of Cooking.” While I lived in France I sought out such a book and this it the one I found. My copy is the French version. But that’s okay, because if a dish doesn't come out quite right, I can blame it on my tortured French!

LA CUCINA: The Regional Cooking of Italy translated by Jay Hyams

THE PLEASURES OF COOKING FOR ONE by Judith Jones, who  concluded that it’s a delight to cook for one: “I open up the wine and light the candles, turn on some music, and give thanks.” 

Wine Sale at La Tour d'Argent

Wine About

by J. Michael Wheeler
Not the Bargain Basement
Just in time for the holidays, one of the most famous Parisian restaurants, La Tour d’Argent, is having something of a yard-sale. Well, a cellar-sale really. La Tour, as it is affectionately known, will be auctioning off 18,000 bottles from it’s historic wine cellar on December 7 and 8, 2009. For example, if you've got about $1800 there's a nice bottle of Corton, a red Burgundy, vintage 1895, that you can snatch up.

But don’t worry if that’s beyond your price range. There’s a 1983 Pétrus, a magnum, that will go for only about $1,350. And then there are the Premier Cru Bordeaux classics, Château Latour, Lafite-Rothschild, Mouton-Rothschild, Haut-Brion, Cheval Blanc and Château Margaux. Burgundies, which make up 60% of La Tour’s current cellar, to be auctioned will not include the big boys like La Tâche and Romanée Conti, but Meursault Clos de la Barre Lafon, Puligny Montrachet Referts Sauzet and Vosne Romanée Jayer.

Emptying out 18,000 bottles of wine from one’s cellar may seem like a lot, but for La Tour it is merely about 4% of the 450,000 bottle cellar! That cellar consists of 27 rooms that are seven stories below La Tour’s dining room.

La Tour d’Argent (http://www.tourdargent.com/) overlooks Notre Dame on the Left Bank of Paris at 15/17 quai de la Tournelle, 75005 Paris. À votre santé!

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Cranberry Zinfandel Port Relish

Ordinary Out of the

OOO by Kate Krukowski Gooding

Cranberry Zinfandel Port Relish
It’s beginning to rain and that weather keeps me inside and cooking. I began to research and work on old holiday recipes. I thought I would tackle traditional family dishes that have not been my favorite during Thanksgiving and Christmas. I read a cranberry jelly recipe somewhere that used orange liquor, orange zest and port and I immediately thought of my favorite port; Brown Estate Red Zinfandel Port.  We are having old friends over and I wanted to just enhance an old tradition. Simple and delicious!

Cranberries have history in England, Europe and North America. Did you know that Native Americans combined cranberries (which have a natural preservative) with dried meat mixtures to prolong shelf life and that in 1912 sauce was first commercially canned by the Cape Cod Cranberry Company which marketed the sauce as "Ocean Spray Cape Cod Cranberry Sauce?" It has been a tradition for many years.

Moose River Corn Chowder

Ordinary Out of the

OOO by Kate Krukowski Gooding

Moose River Corn Chowder
Necessity is the Mother of Invention, my mom always used to say. This recipe is a perfect example!

Five girlfriends and I went up home from University of Southern Maine one weekend to hike Bald Mountain with my brother and five of his friends from Jackman/Moose River. We came home hungry! Looking through my brothers’ somewhat empty cupboard I had to create with what was available – “meal interpretation.” The sweetened condensed milk added a light, sweet richness to this chowder that keeps you dipping your spoon in the bowl over and over again!