Cooking Up a Storm with Chef J

If you watched the commercials during this year's Superbowl, you might remember an incredibly politically incorrect ad for Groupon that featured Timothy Hutton.   (This might actually be advertising at its most clever because it has stuck with me since then.)  Groupon negotiates discounts with businesses and then advertises those discounts to people who've registered to receive notices of deals in their area.  My friend Dorrit first discovered Chef J when she received an e-mail with a Groupon coupon for a cooking class at Chef J's Bistro and Cooking Studio in Cape Coral.  It sounded like a fun birthday present for a friend and off they went to a class on Spanish cuisine.  They had a great time so we decided to check out his class on French cooking this week.   For $35, you get the class and dinner, so what did we have to lose?

Chef J is a real charmer.  He's from the Cayman Islands so he has that laid back Caribbean air about him--the perfect personality to make cooking something challenging feel accessible.  He's also an instructor at the Business and Entrepreneurial Academy at the Oasis Charter High School, so he knows how to teach as well as cook.  

We started off our evening learning how to prepare a great appetizer to serve in the hot summer months--cucumber provencale with French goat cheese and roasted red peppers.  Since you eat first with your eyes, presentation is important and he shared a great secret with us--balsamic glaze in a squirt bottle.   The plating converted this light, easy and delicious appetizer into something really impressive for your guests.  I have to say that cucumbers are one of the two or three foods that I have an aversion to, and even I really enjoyed it!

We then moved on to a delicious papaya salad.  Again, the idea was something light but full of unexpected flavors.   The first surprise was that he used iceberg lettuce for this dish, which seemed very unsophisticated with the more exotic greens that we are used to seeing these days.  There was a method to his madness, though--iceberg lettuce provides crunch and coolness without the flavor that other lettuces have so it supports the salad while letting the other ingredients be the stars.  Who knew?   Ultimately, the salad included papaya, toasted almond slivers, cherry tomatoes, asiago cheese, red onion and cucumber (which he kindly left off my plate since I had now shared my distaste with him).  The real star of the dish was the dressing, though--an extraordinary vinaigrette that took this salad to a different level.   While making the dressing, Chef J shared a secret with his students--you need to whisk the vinegar for three to five minutes to make sure it's warm before you add the oil to it.  When the vinegar is warm, it combines beautifully with the oil and develops a nice consistency rather than separating.  He also uses salad oil rather than olive oil to keep the dressing light.   Truly delicious.

We were now ready for the main course--sauteed chicken breast with an orange truffle beurre blanc and garlic basil fingerling potatoes.   Rest assured that any dietary credit that we might have gotten for eating light in our first two courses was wiped away with this sauce, which included almost a pound of butter for the 14 of us plus some heavy cream.   The potatoes were beautiful with their different colors and the smell of fresh basil wafting from the plate made them irresistible.   The chicken breasts were incredibly juicy after having been browned in a skillet and then baked until cooked through.  Chef J poured wine over the chicken before putting it in the oven to keep it moist, another great tip to file away.   The sauce was the star of this dish, though, and was truly to die for.  (Just ask our arteries!)  The combination of fresh orange juice, white truffle oil, butter, cream and garlic was a knock out, and would be great on a white fish as well as chicken.

Chef J knew that his students would be too full for dessert (although I could have used a taste of sorbet or a square of chocolate to round out the meal.)    Three hours after we arrived, we waddled out of the restaurant, having had a great dinner and an evening of entertainment.  Plus we have new recipes to try out on our friends and family.   During the class, we were studying the schedule of classes to figure out what we should try next.  Caribbean cuisine?  Seafood with an Asian flair?  Hawaiian night?   (You can check it out yourself at http://www.chefjcatering.com/.)    Whatever we decide, you can be sure that you'll read about it here.  Now I think it's time to head to the gym to work off some of that beurre blanc sauce!

Think Global, Eat Local, Part II

Eva showing Johnny's Seed Catalogue

I mentioned in my last post that Jay and I have become members of Worden Farm, a local farm.  We go each week and select our allocation of vegetables, some of which are old favorites and some of which require us to stretch our culinary horizons a bit.  Last Sunday, we went to a class at the farm called, "What Do I Do With All These Veggies?" that was taught by Eva Worden, one of the owners of the farm, and Cindi Florit, a member.    

The class started with how to identify the vegetables (which isn't as straightforward as it sounds).  Since we live locally, we are able to go to the farm to select our weekly vegetables and we get the benefit of labels saying what it what and pick accordingly.  Members who don't live locally go to a central site each Wednesday and pick up a box of freshly picked veggies.  For those members, there truly can be some mystery ingredients to work with!  One tip was to have a copy of Johnny's Seed Catalogue on hand.  (You can order one at no cost by calling 877-Johnnys.)  The catalogue has handy pictures of various fruits and vegetables that will help you know what you're dealing with.

Once you know what you have, their strongest recommendation was to prep the veggies so that they will be ready when you are.  Most everything should be washed and stored in the frig in a container or a dish towel.  This is apparently important to maintaining an appropriate humidity level for the veggies.  (Unlike veggies purchased at the grocery store, they shouldn't wilt with some water.)  They encouraged the members to freeze what they aren't going to use in the next few days, either in raw form or as a soup or sauce.  We learned that some veggies do better if they are blanched before being frozen.

Then we were on to the "cooking" portion of the class.  Eva and Cindi shared several favorite recipes with us, with liberal samplings.  They showed us how easy it is to incorporate veggies into your daily meals.  For instance, there was a "tatsoi" egg bake.  (What is tatsoi, you might ask.  We still don't know for sure because they didn't have any on Sunday so they used swiss chard instead.  It's all about using what you have on hand!)   This was basically a brunch item--eggs, milk, cheese and whatever veggies are in your frig.  Simple and tasty.  The eggplant parm and ratatouille were my personal favorites of the day.  The most surprising (and weird) tasting was a smoothie that had bananas, apples, water, ice and--you guessed it--kale.  It actually tasted pretty good but the green color was a bit offputting.  Cindi said her kids love the veggie smoothies but I'm a bit skeptical.

Both Cindi and Eva encouraged the participants in the workshop not to be slaves to recipes when working with their veggies.  Throw caution to the wind and throw some dandelion greens in your salad or (as we did last night) make slaw using daikon.  For people who need a little assistance, the Worden Farm website (www.wordenfarm.org) has recipes under the "Crops/Recipes" tab organized by vegetable.  Here's to a happy, healthy and vegetable-filled 2011!

Think Global, Eat Local, Part I

Jay is one of the most industrious people I know.  The week after we moved to Florida, he had his real estate license, poised to sell homes to our friends who decide to follow us south.  (This week, that seems like a bit of a bait and switch--the temperature is supposed to get down to 29 tonight!)  Our good friends Jacques and Jill thought that setting up a southern foothold sounded like a good idea and came down to Sarasota in July to look for a condo.

Just to digress a moment, Jacques and Jay have done some competitive cooking on New Years Eve over the last few years.  I call Jacques my "Iron Chef" and Jay my "Top Chef" (which Jay takes some offense at since Iron Chef is a higher accolade.  If you saw the things that routinely come out of Jacques' kitchen, though, you would be astonished.)   Obviously, then, it was important that Jacques and Jill, with their trusty real estate agent in tow, check out some of the local dining establishments before making the move to make sure they were up to their culinary standards.  In the course of their travels, they talked to some restauranteurs about where they got their produce and Worden Farm in Punta Gorda was the answer.  Our curiosity was piqued.

Jay learned that you could become a member of the Farm, which we did.  Starting in early December, our membership entitles us to go to the Farm once a week and choose fresh produce that they picked for their members that morning.  We are entitled to 200 "servings" over the course of the season.  A serving might be anything from two avocados to a bunch of French breakfast radishes to a head of kale.  I've been the last two weeks and it is a lot of fun.  There are bins labeled with the names of the vegetables, some of which I've never heard of before and many of which I've never cooked with.  I'm sure that I'm much less adventuresome than Jay would be in his selections but in the last two weeks we've made a couple of new dishes with our produce.  The first week I got some bok choy and we made a delicious stir fry with shrimp.  I also picked up some kale and made a kale, white bean and sausage soup that's one of our favorites (and was first introduced into our repertoire on one of our New Year's Eve culinary adventures with Jacques and Jill.)  This week I was excited to find okra and Jay made a great gumbo with shrimp and andouille sausage.  I also picked up a papaya and some star fruit, which is surprisingly good with our morning yogurt.  And I was thrilled to find that sunflowers were among this week's selection.  Being the Kansas girl that I am, sunflowers are one of my favorites (sunflowers are the state flower of Kansas, in case you didn't know!) 

On some weeks, the Farm has "you pick" extras that you can go into the field and collect that don't count towards your allocation.  I haven't tried this yet but am looking forward to checking it out.  The property has a barn with a kitchen where you can "chat and chop" after you've picked up your veggies (more about this in my next post about the class we took there).    They always have a couple of soups going in the barn as well that you can sample (and buy, but that seems kind of crazy with all the veggies you are already bringing home!) and sometimes there are other products for sale as well.  Last week there was goat cheese by the ounce as well as home made soaps. 

I am excited about having our own local farm here in Punta Gorda to help us expand our culinary horizons.  Maybe those old Kansas roots are pushing through my psyche after all these years.  As the saying goes, "There's no place like home!" 

Salad Days

With this ongoing heat, the phrase "salad days" seems appropriate (although according to Wikipedia, the term actually refers to someone at the peak of his or her abilities). Hopefully I'm working up to that!

One nice thing about this summer has been trying some new recipes. Three new salad recipes are being added to the repertoire:

--Beet and goat cheese salad. I've actually done this before but was inspired to try again after hearing about Nicola's inclusion of beets in her recent cooking class. Michelle shared some little baby beets from the market with me and I roasted them per Nicola's instruction (cut off tips and tails, salt and pepper, wrap in foil and bake at 425 for 1-1/4 hours--skins then come off easily). I roasted string beans as well (don't know why this has been intimidating--just add a little salt, pepper and olive oil and put them in the oven at 425 for about 25 minutes, turning occasionally--they just need to carmelize a bit--delicious!) I cooked them early in the day and then let them warm to room temperature before serving (which took about five minutes in this incredible heat!) To round it off, I added toasted walnuts and goat cheese. Really tasty and colorful!

--Island Pork Tenderloin. This dish was served at the ladies' golf luncheon at the Club and it was quite delicious. It takes a bit of prep work with the searing and then the brown sugar glaze (which I think is what puts it over the top) but it is easy and fairly light. Will report back after I serve it at my own ladies' luncheon (which is getting bigger by the day--I hope I haven't bitten off more than I can chew, so to speak!)

--Arugula Salad with goat cheese, toasted or candied walnuts and carmelized red onions. I tried this salad after buying a huge thing of arugula so that I'd have a couple of sprigs to put on my strawberry goat cheese bruschetta (another interesting dish--maybe I should have that as the starter at the ladies' luncheon...) I think the trick to this dish is the carmelized red onions--finishing them with a bit of balsamic seems to add to the dish. (I happened to see this on a food show with Ina Gardener but it was also in the recipe.) One note: you can never carmelize too many onions--they shrink down incredibly! I liked the toasted walnuts better than candied, although that might have been my poor job of candying them as they turned out sticky.

That's my take on Julia and Julia for the day!