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The Greatest Threat to America…

Saturday, April 10, 20040

Outlet Radio Network
April 2004

The Greatest Threat to America…

I have just returned from a week in Las Vegas. Sin City. Gambling Capital of America. Crowded, noisy, a trifle on the grungy side, too much neon, too much spandex.

Home of the All-You-Can-Eat Buffet.

There is, perhaps, no greater evil threatening America. The words all-you-can-eat bring out the worst in people. How so? Thank you for asking.

First, the eating all you can part. I have watched friends push away half-eaten plates of pasta, steak, well, anything, at fancy restaurants where they were shelling out three-figures for dinner. Comments like, “oh, I couldn’t eat another bite”, and “it’s just so much food”, and “it’s so rich” echoed across the table. I watch with amazement as some of these same folk belly-up to the steam table for their third and fourth load of deep-fried, cream sauce laden, over-cooked mediocre slabs of unidentifiable victuals. “I’m gonna get my money’s worth!” seems the cry of the day.

I myself was guilty of consuming a stack of three chicken-fried steaks with biscuits and sausage gravy at breakfast one morning. That was, of course, after the pancakes, fruit, yogurt, bacon… oh, and save room for dessert at the end. Dessert? At breakfast? Oh, why not, a slab of apple pie is just fruit, right? So much for last month’s anti-cholesterol efforts… thank god I’m only in Vegas for a few days.

Second, woe betide anyone who gets in the way of one of those spandex clad neon-phytes enroute to the mound of recently thawed shrimp cocktail. When I went up for my first dozen they had just put out a basin the size of a small bathtub mounded a foot high with the pink and white critters. By the time I’d reached the end of the steam table there were scraps left and two hefty visitors were slashing at each other with tongs for rights to claim the last few. I was passed by a gentleman who had two dinner plates heaped as high as he could with crustacea.

A few years ago in May, I hosted a dinner on Mothers’ Day. The old adage always was that the best thing you could get mother on that day was a reservation somewhere. In my family, the budget tended towards take-out and fast food. So, for that dinner, I reinterpreted a collection of classic take-out fast foods – and made ‘em all you can eat style. It was a simple parody of culinary gems from Taco Bell, Arby’s, McDonald’s, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Wendy’s.

With apologies to Micky D’s for stealing their obviously trademarked, registered, copyrighted, servicemarked, and probably patented McMuffin name, I present the modern, updated, and actually probably decent for you, Mushroom McMuffin.

Mushroom McMuffin
Serves 4

4 large biscuits, english muffins, crumpets, or something similar
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 clove of garlic, minced

4 portobello mushrooms of roughly equal diameter to the biscuits
1 cup of chicken stock
¼ pound of asiago cheese
4 quail eggs
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt and freshly ground black pepper

I’m not going to tell you how to make the biscuits. Use your favorite recipe, buy the Pillsbury ones in a tube, pick up a pack of Thomas’ – it’s all good.

Combine the garlic and olive oil and let sit for a few minutes. Split open the biscuits and brush with the oil mixture. Toast in a warm oven until they are just lightly golden.

Meanwhile, separate the mushroom caps from their stems. Take the stems, chop them coarsely, add to the stock in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes until liquid is reduced by half. Strain, season with salt and pepper to taste.

Season the mushroom caps with salt and pepper and saute in olive oil (you could also grill these if you have a grill) until they are soft, lightly browned, and smell wonderful.

In shallow bowls place the bottom of each biscuit. Top with the mushroom caps, then carefully crack open the quail eggs and top each cap with one (uncooked). Shave asiago cheese over the whole thing, add a little more salt and pepper, and lightly spoon the mushroom reduction sauce around each. Eat. Oh, you should have made more…

I matched this dish with a slightly off-dry Vouvray, a Chenin blanc based white wine from the Loire Valley. It was a delightful combination, and the whole thing somehow seemed better than an Egg McMuffin and burned coffee.

I started writing food & wine columns for the Outlet Radio Network, an online radio station in December 2003. They went out of business in June 2005.

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Priorities!

Wednesday, March 10, 20040

Outlet Radio Network
March 2004

Priorities!

Bombs in Iraq, bombs in Pakistan, terrorism threats, the rise of anti-Semitism, banning of head scarves in French schools, gay marriage and a bad white truffle harvest. It’s clear we’re headed for some sort of disaster… or, to paraphrase the Ghostbusters team:
Real wrath of God type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling. Forty years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes. The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats, living together. Mass hysteria!

Now I know this stuff is important. But my cholesterol is up and I put on a few pounds. I’m supposed to go on vacation and lay around a pool with some friends in a few weeks. While that may not sound like a disaster of Biblical proportions, it certainly borders on Rubenesque proportions.

I have to admit, that occupies more of my concern than any of the above, except perhaps the white truffle harvest. I don’t want to start taking Lipitor, that would just seem like license to go out and eat badly. I didn’t put on enough weight to “go on a diet”.

It’s more like I actually have to make use of my gym membership and eat more carefully.

Top that off with some of my readers actually demanding that I provide vegetarian and fish recipes! I was all ready to share some sort of spring lamb extravaganza and then the weight of the world is dumped on my shoulders. Well, if Atlas can shrug, so can I. Have some fun with these dishes:

Pan Seared Salmon in Shallot Sauce

Serves 4

4 6-8 ounce salmon fillets, 1″ thick
garlic powder
coarse salt
olive oil
2 dozen small shallots, peeled and quartered
1 stick unsalted butter or margarine
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon almond or hazelnut oil
2 branches of fresh rosemary
green lentils
butter or olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Start the lentils cooking according to package directions (plan on 20 minutes cooking time). Melt the butter with the nut oil, salt and sugar. Add the shallots, rosemary, salt and pepper, toss to coat. Cook over medium heat, stirring regularly, until shallots are soft and caramelized (plan on 15 minutes). Lightly coat the salmon fillets with salt and garlic powder. Sear in olive oil until lightly browned on both sides. Cook until medium rare-medium. Drain lentils, toss with butter, salt and pepper to taste. Put into individual serving bowls, top with salmon fillets and portion the sauce over each fillet.

Okay, there’s butter in this recipe. Deal with it… (actually, I’ve found this great “butter-flavored” olive oil spread from Fleishmann’s that I’ve been using as a substitute).

Farfalle with Peas & Radishes

Serves 4

1 pound package of dry farfalle (bowtie pasta)
8 ounces fresh green peas
8 ounces french breakfast radishes with greens
1 tablespoon chopped mint
salt & black pepper
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Follow package directions for cooking farfalle to “al dente” texture. Simmer peas in water with one tablespoon of the butter until tender. Drain. Thinly slice the radishes, salt lightly and cook slowly in the other tablespoon of butter. Rinse the green thoroughly and roughly chop. Quickly saute in the olive oil. Add peas and radishes and season to taste. Add drained pasta to vegetables. Toss with the mint, adjust seasoning and add additional olive oil if needed to coat pasta.

I started writing food & wine columns for the Outlet Radio Network, an online radio station in December 2003. They went out of business in June 2005.

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A Sparkling February

Tuesday, February 10, 20040

Outlet Radio Network
February 2004

A Sparkling February

February is one of my favorite months. It’s not the weather, which is usually abysmal, at least any place that I’ve ever lived. It’s a combination of several holidays – Groundhog’s Day, Presidents’ Day (and all four presidents individual birthdays that happen during the month – can you name them?), Valentine’s Day, and Lupercalia.

Our little furry friend did or did not see his shadow, I can never remember which one is the good one. Nonetheless it is currently snowing and sleeting out my window, the sky is grey, the temperature is diving faster than Michael and Janet Jackson’s popularity with sponsors, and I’m in a perfectly delightful mood.

Valentine’s Day, a modernization slash christianization of the ancient fertility festival of Lupercalia (you were wondering, weren’t you) has to be my favorite holiday of the year. Except for whichever other ones are. I’m a holiday junkie. There’s something about all those cute little candied hearts, sending “Will You Be My Valentine” cards to all the girls in school (I wonder what would have happened if I’d given one to a boy in first grade), chocolates, roses, chasing naked maidens around with goat skin whips… sorry, slipped back into the old holiday.

But mostly, for me, it is, like all holidays, about the food. Valentine’s Day gives a chance to play with all sorts of seductive, sensuous and ostensibly aphrodisiac foods. There are those we are familiar with here in the U.S. – chocolates, oysters, caviar, honey, figs, strawberries… just to name a few. But with cultural variations there are so many other possibilities – truffles, coriander seeds, pinenuts, vanilla, nutmeg, ginger, garlic…

In fact, there are so many possibilities that it might almost be easier to list the foods that no one has claimed as an aphrodisiac than those that have been!

Now for me, there are a few simple rules. First, there must be somewhere there to share the experience with. If there’s not, I’ll just go draw a bubble bath and sip a glass of champagne. If there is, oh wait, I’ll go draw a bubble bath and break out the champagne anyway. The food should be sensual and slippery to the touch – part, no doubt, of the reasoning behind the crowning of the oyster as king or queen of the aphrodisiacs. And, you should be able to feed each other with your fingertips. No cutlery involved! Which kind of moves oysters out of my spotlight, unless they’re raw on the half shell.

I have to admit, the first thing that always comes to my mind for a seductive tLte-a-tLte is a strawberry dipped in warm melted chocolate alongside that glass of bubbly. In truth, I can rarely think of anything in the food world that is much more appealing.

Okay, the food is taken care of. I know, you thought I was going to give you a recipe this month. Sure, sure… melt some dark chocolate, get some fresh strawberries, dip, feed them to each other, hop in the bubble bath. Use your imagination.

No, via a circuitous route, I’m headed to the bubbly in the glass. Because for me, that’s where the romance part of the aphrodisiac comes into play. Maybe it’s the alcohol. Maybe it’s the bubbles. Maybe it’s the mystique. Champagne can, for me, make or break an amatory evening.

So, what’s the point of this all… Oh yes, to recommend some Champagne for you to drink! Whether for Valentine’s Day, Lupercalia, Groundhog’s Day, George Washington’s Birthday, William Henry Harrison’s Birthday, Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday, or Ronald Reagan’s Birthday (you didn’t think I’d leave you hanging, did you), here are some prime recommendations. Try something other than those “name brands” that you see everywhere (not that there’s anything wrong with them, but be adventurous). And, with the exception of the last recommendation, most of these will cost you less than the “usual suspects.”

One of my year in, year out favorties is Larmandier-Bernier’s Blanc de Blancs 1er Cru Brut, N.V. Oh my, what does all that mean? Let’s split it up a little… Larmandier-Bernier, the name of the estate, currently run by Pierre Larmandier. Blanc de Blancs literally means “white from whites”. As you may or may not know, Champagne can only be made from three different grapes – Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, and Chardonnay. The former two are red grapes, the latter white – Blanc de Blancs being a white wine made from only white grapes – i.e., 100% Chardonnay. 1er Cru, or Premier Cru, is a classification by the French government that groups various vineyards into a ranking system – the highest being Grand Cru, then Premier Cru, then all the rest. So Pierre’s vineyards are in the second tier – but trust me, that’s not a bad thing. Brut is a level of dryness, which is a function of the amount of residual sugar in the bubbly when it arrives at your table. There is a scale for Champagne that goes from sweet (Doux) to bone dry (Brut Zero). The most common has just a touch of remaining sugar, and is called Brut. And finally, N.V. – Non-Vintage, which very simply means that the wine is a blend of more than one year’s production. This is quite common in Champagne as it allows the winemaker to keep a consistent style year after year by blending the results of several vintages to keep your tastebuds happy.

Back to the wine in question – laser focused purity of fruit with delicious apple and yeast flavors, medium bodied, and absolutely delicious!

A. Margaine Demi-Sec is my current fave when I want something with a touch of noticeable sweetness. Perfect with a cheese course or with dessert, this demi-sec, or semi-dry, has beautiful floral notes and a solid touch of minerals on it. As the importer puts it – “Are you man enough to like a wine because it’s pretty?”

Chartogne-Taillet “Cuvée St. Anne”, N.V. is a just plain “wow” sparkler. Big, rich, and just plain remarkable, this wine is a blend of all three champagne grapes. Flavors of baked apple, butter, and golden beets with a creamy finish make this a fantastic main course bubbly!

Beaumont des Crayères “Fleur de Rosé” is one of my favorite pink champagnes. Once the provenance of call girls and “stage door johnnys”, rosé champagne is not (and truly never has been) sweet pink swill. A few brands that were popular in their heyday gained that reputation, but truthfully, most of the stuff is elegant, dry, and delicious. The pink color comes from a blending of the red (remember the Pinot Noir and Pinot Meuneir) and white (Chardonnay) wines prior to the bubbly process. Which brings up a point – while white grapes can only make white wine, red grapes can make red or white wine! Bite into a red grape and notice that the red color is virtually all in the skin – with careful pressing, part or all of that color can be left behind in the winemaking process.

Duval-Leroy “Paris” is a winner not just for the delightful wine in the bottle, but for the bottle itself. A dark blue, wide bodied bottle, with a gold silk-screened Paris café scene created by artist LeRoy Neiman is beautiful to display. But pop the cork and find a blend heavy on the Pinot Noir with Chardonnay topping it off that yields a delicious quaff with flavors of honeysuckle, white flowers, and hazelnuts.

Comte Audoin de Dampierre “Cuvée des Ambassadeurs”, N.V. is made by a real count. Well, okay, he owns the place, he doesn’t make the wine himself. And the “Ambassadeurs” comes from the wine being the “house champagne” at nearly four dozen French embassies around the world. A delectable fifty-fifty blend Chardonnay and Pinot Noir has a wonderful golden color, and notes of wood smoke, flowers, and grapefruit. Quite nice!

Last, but by no means least (and the most expensive one listed here) as one of my favorite champagnes of all time, Vranken-Demoiselle “Cuvée 21”. Created by Champagne Demoiselle (now owned by the corporate Vranken Group), as the answer to champagne in the 21st century, this is a lush, rich champagne with flavors of fresh baked biscuits topped with apple butter. Oh, and the gorgeous bottle trimmed in gold and served up in its own blue velvet sack is pretty damned enticing as well.

Happy February all!

I started writing food & wine columns for the Outlet Radio Network, an online radio station in December 2003. They went out of business in June 2005.

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The Edible Complex

Saturday, January 10, 20040

Outlet Radio Network
January 2004
The Edible Complex
(a love-hate relationship with my mother’s kitchen)
The holidays are a great time to reflect on home, family, career, and the direction of my life. No really! I spent quite a bit of time reflecting on my family this year. I was thinking back to my mother’s kitchen…

~~~~flashback~~~~

They were slimy. I remember it quite clearly. They were really, really slimy. Oh, and brownish grey. Not greyish brown, which would almost have been acceptable. They were brownish grey. And slimy. Did I mention that?

If like me you grew up in the decade of folk rock and worrying about Vietnam (as a place to be sent in tacky khakis as opposed to visiting it with your new boyfriend), you might have an inkling of what I’m talking about. Remember I’m a chef.

Give up?

Mushrooms.

Remember them? They came in cans. They were slimy. They were brownish grey. The 60s were a time when mothers everywhere were cooking things that came out of cans, out of boxes, out of new plastic pouches that allowed some mythical jolly green giant to preserve his veggies for later consumption “just like fresh”. You can still see those mushrooms at many pizza places.

I loathed them. My family knew for many years that I hated mushrooms. In fact it wasn’t until visiting an aunt during my college years that I had actual, fresh mushrooms. There in the kitchen (my aunt, not the mushrooms, well, actually, they were there too), she was whipping up a stir-fry of green beans and freshly sliced mushrooms.

Now mind you, it isn’t that I didn’t know what a mushroom looked like. I’d seen them in the grocery store. But my mom wasn’t one of the people buying them. Neither were the moms of any of my friends. But here was my aunt with a package of them, slicing and cooking! I waited for them to turn slimy. And brownish grey. They didn’t.

So what’s a boy to do? I politely tasted them. Oh my. These were good!

It turned out they came in many edible varieties. Okay, I knew that theoretically. I just hadn’t known they didn’t all turn out, well, you know…

I started experimenting. Did you know that peas actually do come in pods? It’s not just an expression. And there are things you can do with them that don’t involve butter sauce. Carrots can be had in ways other than sticks and candied! Hell, veggies aside, did you know that meat can be cooked in ways that don’t involve Shake ‘n Bake, cans of Campbell’s Soup, or Hamburger Helper?

Now don’t misunderstand. I loved my mother’s kitchen growing up. I learned how to cook there. And, for the time, and for someone who had given up her career to raise four kids, she was quite progressive in the kitchen. She taught us all how to cook. Admittedly much of it involved cans, boxes, bottles, and frozen packages, but it was a start. We didn’t grow up on “fast food” – not that there was as much of it then as there is today. I probably only ate at McDonald’s half a dozen times prior to adulthood.

And, in truth, other than having a list of foods that I grew up hating (didn’t we all?), I loved eating what my mother cooked. It’s more of that whole hindsight thing. I discovered later on that I hadn’t needed to grow up hating so many foodstuffs. I suppose that’s part of what reflecting back on family is all about…

~~~~end flashback~~~~

So what’s this all lead to? I have friends who hate certain foods. In fact, I could point to almost any of my friends and they could list off the things they hate. Many of these they’ve hated since childhood. I’ve had the good fortune to bring some of them over and re-introduce them to these childhood foods, or go out to dinner and do the same. Cooked fresh, and perhaps cooked well for the first time in their lives. Okay, sometimes I have to double-dare them to re-try the food, but it’s worth it.

If there’s one of those little menu items left over from your early years. One of those things that your mother made over and over again trying to get you to like it. And, very possibly made badly because, well, if like mine, they started out with bad or mediocre ingredients… perhaps it’s time to give them another try? Oh, and I still pick the slimy, brownish grey mushrooms off my pizza slices…

Simple and easy to prepare, this recipe will get you over that loathing of mushrooms. If it doesn’t, well then, you just don’t like them!

Mushroom Sauté

2 lbs mixed mushrooms (3-5 varieties would be great)
2 garlic cloves, minced
¼ cup soy sauce
¼ cup white wine
¼ cup heavy cream
salt and pepper
1 tablespoon of butter
¼ cup of olive oil

Cut mushrooms into bite sized pieces. Heat oil and butter in a heavy skillet over medium heat. Add garlic and mushrooms and a sprinkling of salt. Cook, stirring regularly, until they are slightly browned. Add the white wine, soy sauce and cream and continue heating until the liquid starts to simmer. Cover the pan, turn the heat down to low, and continue cooking for 2-3 more minutes – the liquid should thicken into a gravy-like texture. Remove lid, add pepper to taste (you probably won’t need more salt with the soy sauce in the dish). Serve ladled over thick slices of country bread.

Serves 2 as a main course, 4-6 as a side course.

I started writing food & wine columns for the Outlet Radio Network, an online radio station in December 2003. They went out of business in June 2005.

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The Festival of the Green Goddess

Friday, December 10, 19930

Outlet Radio Network
December 2003

The Festival of the Green Goddess

“Why, really Sir, a play requires so much attention,– it is scarce possible to keep awake if one listens; – for, indeed, by the time it is evening, one has been so fatigued with dining, – or wine, – or the house, – or studying, – that it is – it is perfectly an impossibility.” – Evelina, Letter XX

Thankfully for British actor George Arliss, this wasn’t the case when he appeared in the play “The Green Goddess” in San Francisco. In fact, the play was so wildly successful that it was made into a silent film in 1923 and a “talkie” in 1930. In fact Mr. Arliss played the antagonist, the Rajah of Rukh, in all three productions. It was such a popular story, and his performance so brilliant, that he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. He did lose, but to himself, as he was also nominated for Best Actor for his portrayal of Disraeli in the eponymous film!

But back to the 1920-21 theater season, and George Arliss was staying at The Palace Hotel. Someone, and it has been suggested that it was Arliss himself, thought that the hotel should do something in honor of his success. The chef in the hotel’s exquisite kitchen, clearly influenced by suggestions of greenery and the like, created a crab and romaine salad in honor of the consummate actor. Green Goddess dressing was born.

Now, I remember Green Goddess dressing fondly from my childhood. It was the 60’s, and mothers across the country were swept up in the home economics trend. Packaged foods, premixed sauces and dressings were the rage. I have no doubt that the Green Goddess we were offered on many a night with our salad was from Kraft. We were all quite cosmopolitan feeling when we were allowed to choose our own salad topper from an array of bottles.

The basic premise of this culinary delight is a salad with some sort of seafood, and a dressing made of mayonnaise, anchovies, herbs and spices – heavy on the tarragon. Since the original this sauce has been used on other sorts of salads, as an accompaniment to broiled fish, and as a tasty topping for steamed artichokes. It is quite versatile, and much like Caesar dressing, for those of you who think you don’t like anchovies, you’ll never know they’re there.

There is a classic recipe, the one created by our aforementioned chef. There are also more variations on the theme than I care to count. A quick Google search revealed more than 2,400 recipes, no doubt many of them are repeats of each other, but clearly a rather large vat of salad dressing! I looked for some of the more interesting, though admittedly I did not wade through all the entries available. There are even more entries for the green lady when one includes that Green Goddess is also a euphemistic term for the hallucinogenic drink absinthe, some various druidic sorts, and even a character from the original Tarzan series.

I’m always fascinated by the evolution of recipes. Numerous chefs substituted for the classic mayonnaise – cream, cottage cheese, tofu, and buttermilk all made appearances. Fresh herbs versus dried herbs (not surprisingly, the main of these being from the McCormick spice company’s website). To anchovy or not? And if so, whole, chopped, or paste? There was even a recipe that was little more than pureed frozen peas with some herbs and soy sauce tossed in. My one constraint in selecting recipes to try was that they had to include at least some of the three primary flavors – tarragon, garlic and anchovies.

Being the intrepid sort in the kitchen, my plan was to whip up a few of these concoctions, toss in the bottled variety for comparison, and have some friends over for a taste test. It was a raving success, mostly accompanied by the good humor that my acquaintances have in assisting me with these bizarre whims that I shower on them. We even had a contest for who could pick out the original recipe (the first person to get it did it by deductive reasoning – 1920s, no blenders, so eliminated the blender versions; it was a hotel kitchen – had to be the one that tasted most like mayonnaise… he was right!).

We had an immediate setback. Despite scouring the shelves of grocery stores throughout the area, not one bottle of Green Goddess was found. A visit to Kraft’s website yielded no clues as to whether they make it anymore, but was quite scary in the discovery of the number of brands that they own. A morning was spent shopping, blending and mixing, veggies were cut (for dipping), the table was set, and the Open House Festival of the Green Goddess was on!

So, how did the half dozen entries fare?

The very 70s version based on yogurt, fresh herbs, and lime juice was quickly voted the Weakest Link and headed for the drain. We decided it might have made an okay dip for a steamed artichoke, but had little else to offer.

The evaporated milk based recipe had good flavor but was the consistency of, well, milk. It required a spoon to eat it as it ran right off of anything dipped into it. Not quite the Weakest Link, but headed down the tubes right behind the one that was.

Mixed reviews came in for a recipe from the Cook for Good Health cookbook. Some of us liked it, some didn’t – with its base of fat free cottage cheese and pureed cucumber. One thing was clear, it didn’t fit the Green Goddess mold in flavor, and it was relegated to the sidelines.

In third place, the entry from the spice company, McCormick. This was the only entry based on dried herbs and spices, so I was curious to see how it would fare, and it did well. I’m not totally surprised, my McCormick Spice Cookbook is still one of my most used tomes. The flavor of this one was quite good, and ran a very close third place to the second place winner…

…which was the original recipe from The Palace Hotel. Both of these were mixed versions based on mayonnaise and not pureed in the blender. Though it was clear that the original had more subtle flavors than the McCormick version, and the mayo showed through more clearly, most of us liked that. It fit the idea of a crab and romaine salad, stood the test of time, and showed why some recipes are classics.

However, the first place award went to the dressing recipe from the Velvet Turtle restaurant chain. This chain of no frills, no surprises restaurants is, I believe, no longer, but at one time operated in the southern California area. The recipe was the most complex of all the entries, and had some of the most intense flavors. The garlic and anchovy came through loud and clear, the tarragon was barely there, but we liked it, we really liked it!

So, I give you the top three recipes. Have fun with them!

McCormick’s Green Goddess Dressing – Bronze Whisk

Mix together in a bowl:

3 cups mayonnaise
¼ cup white wine vinegar
1 can (2 oz) anchovy fillets, mashed
1 tablespoon dry minced onion
1 tablespoon dry parsley flakes
1 tablespoon dry tarragon leaves
1 tablespoon dry chopped chives
⅛ teaspoon onion powder
⅛ teaspoon garlic powder

Let stand for at least 30 minutes to blend the flavors and soften the dried ingredients (which, of course, McCormick’s specifies as their own brand).

The Palace Hotel’s Green Goddess Dressing – Silver Whisk

Mix together in a bowl:

2 cups mayonnaise
1 mashed garlic clove
4 minced anchovy fillets
1 chopped green onion
2 teaspoons chopped fresh parsley
2 teaspoons chopped fresh chives
1 teaspoon chopped fresh tarragon
1 tablespoon tarragon vinegar

Mix well and let stand to blend flavors. Classically, the garlic clove is just mashed on the inside of the serving bowl, much like a caesar salad – that way the garlic is much more subtle – I just used a smaller clove…

The Velvet Turtle’s Green Goddess Dressing – Gold Whisk

Place in a blender:

2 cups mayonnaise
2 tablespoons anchovy paste
1 cup sour cream
1½ teaspoons seasoned salt (I used Lawry’s because it’s what I grew up on)
3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
5 garlic cloves
1½ medium onion
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1 tablespoon tarragon vinegar
1½ teaspoon celery seed
1½ teaspoon thyme
1½ ripe avocado
1½ teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
a couple drops of green food coloring

Blend until very smooth and let sit for flavors to meld.

I started writing food & wine columns for the Outlet Radio Network, an online radio station in December 2003. They went out of business in June 2005.

December 2003

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