... a spirited celebration of regional food and culinary craft, season by season, with original recipes by Susan S. Bradley
It’s picnic season once again—hallelujah!–and I’m perusing my culinary files for dishes that lend themselves to packing into a cooler and heading to the beach or mountains. This is one of those dishes.
I also love having it on hand in the frig for everyday snacking. Thinly sliced, it makes a fantastic sandwich. But perhaps its most glamorous role is as the star of a composed luncheon plate or the centerpiece of an appetizer buffet.
An egg salad sandwich is an egg salad sandwich is an egg salad sandwich, ad infinitum, right? I don’t think so. An egg salad sandwich is one of life’s most fundamentally satisfying taste experiences and even when done carelessly, it often satisfies nonetheless. But when done thoughtfully, it is one of the greatest dishes in the world.
So you can imagine my excitement when a number of years ago I happened upon a tiny guidebook that mentioned an obscure hole-in-the-wall in Old Town, Portland, Oregon and stated matter of factly that this joint made the BEST egg salad sandwich in the universe. Guess where I went for lunch that day?
If you head to Cantinetta soon, while Northwest field-grown rhubarb season is still in full swing, you may be lucky enough to score the Rhubarb Zeppole with Orange Rhubarb Marmaletta. One word of advice here: DO NOT offer to share this dessert with your table mates. The order consists of four zeppole, and you will want four more when you’ve eaten those.
But as good as the zeppole certainly are, it’s the Marmaletta that has taken up residence in my cranium. And what, pray tell, is Marmaletta (or Marmellata, which seems to be the most official of the various spellings)? Well, to be completely prosaic, it’s jam. Yup, jam. The best darned jam you’ve ever tasted.
Nearly a year ago, at the newly opened Metrovino restaurant in Portland, Oregon’s Pearl district, I spied a dessert on the menu that sounded so implausible that I was honestly expecting NOT to like it. I mean seriously, parmesan cheese in a pound cake? I had never heard of, much less tasted, such a combination–even though I have a library full of dessert cookbooks and am always on the lookout for creative, out of the ordinary flavor combinations.
The idea of pairing strawberries with tomatoes originally came to me while perusing one of my favorite culinary sites, FoodPairing, which features dozens of potentially harmonious and sometimes very odd sounding ingredient pairings. (Another great site for this type of exploration is Khymos. Or check out the most comprehensive book ever written on the topic: The Flavor Bible, by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg. It lists thousands of ingredient pairings favored by some of the world’s most acclaimed chefs.)
As much as I want to jump onto the spring bandwagon and create plate upon plate of bright, sprightly salads, it’s, well, much – too – COLD. So today instead of turning to the beautiful bunches of chickweed, sunflower seed sprouts, and baby arugula that are overflowing the frig, I found myself instead spellbound by two homely little chorizo sausages. I started thinking about their savory, smoky flavor, and the next thing that popped into my mind was HOT SOUP. But not just any hot soup mind you, a Spanish soup called Zarzuela.
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