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ffwd: café style grated carrot salad
I want to love carrot salad. I’ve tried lots of variations on it, and I just can’t get the right mix of flavors to tickle my palette. I was hopeful about this week’s French Friday with Dorie’s recipe: café style grated carrot salad, where the grated carrots are dressed with a honey mustard dressing. Optional ingredients are suggested. In the spring, I tried it with chopped chives, but this time I went with chopped toasted walnuts.
CSA Carrots
The salad is pretty, a burst of orange to complement most summer plates. The dressing is tangy, but also a little cloying at the same time. The nutty flavor of the walnuts was nice, but not enough to wow me. You can’t beat the easy of putting this salad together. I shook the dressing up in a jar, grated the carrots in the Cuisinart, toasted the nuts stovetop for a few minutes, and voilà! Not bad, but not the ultimate carrot salad I seek. J-OK (just OK) as my sister Jennifer says.
I don’t really have anything else to say about the carrot salad. I will show off my Quiche Caprese that I made in honor of Julia Child’s t100th birthday on Wednesday, August 15. Only the custard base was Julia’s recipe, from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The rest is just an inspired tribute. I whisked a tablespoon of pesto into the custard. Then, I arranged sliced tomato and fresh mozzarella over a partial-baked pastry crust. The custard was poured over and baked until set. I had enough for a full tart plus a little tartlet. A slice accompanied by some carrot salad made a colorful plate.
Happy 100th Birthday, Julia!
Happy French Friday, all!
ffwd: warm scallop salad and tomato-cheese tartlets
At my house, there are two definitions of August. To me, August = Tomatoes. To the other resident (husband Howard), August = Corn.
Selections for the first two weeks of French Fridays with Dorie were perfect. Tomato-Cheese Tartlets the first week, and Warm Scallop Salad with Basil, Tomato, and Corn. I missed last week’s deadline for the tartlets, but made both this week.
The tartlets were fun to make. The individual tarts were constructed on disks of puff pastry. I had a little trouble with the puff pastry. The package said you could defrost at broom temperature for 20 minutes or microwave for 90 seconds. I went with the quicker approach, but turned on the microwave and walked away. It got a little too soft and wouldn’t unfold. I just rolled it out with the folds making extra layers, but I had some tearing that didn’t mend as forgivingly as pie crust. But I liked the simplicity of cutting out circles and baking until lightly golden.
As with many of Dorie’s recipes, this one was more of a suggestion than a strict recipe. The disks were smeared with a layer of tapenade or pesto. I tried two of each. This is topped with alternating slices of tomatoes and cheese, goat cheese for me. I warmed the tartlets under the broiler for a few minutes until the cheese started to melt. A final drizzle of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and a fresh basil leaf garnish and it was done. We each ate two of these for dinner, but one tart accompanied with a salad would have made a lovely lunch. Sipping a glass of cold white wine on the side is the perfect accompaniment.
The warm scallop salad was another summer treat. The scallops were a bit pricey, but worth it for the end result. I left out the nectarines, but the lightly dressed corn, freshly picked backyard cherry tomatoes, and fresh basil coulis were packed with flavor. The vegetables surrounded the seared scallops which were the star in the center of the plate. Each component was super simple to put together, now that I’ve learned from several Dorie recipes how foolproof it is to pan-sear scallops. I could make this for a weeknight dinner after a long day at work. The final dish was restaurant worthy.
All-in-all, it was a good week for enjoying new recipes spotlighting seasonal ingredients.
Recipes aren’t posted, but are available in Dorie Greenspan’s book Around My French Table. To read about other home cooks’ experiences with these recipes, check out the Leave Your Link posts at French Fridays with Dorie.
A Plateful of Happiness 