This recipe is a happy accident. I was reading up on how to make Toum sauce. Toum sauce is that garlicky thick white sauce that you eat with shawarma. Most of the recipes were very similar…..almost exact for toum sauce…….They all involved blending together garlic, neutral oil, salt and lemon………but all toum recipes I read also suggesting adding one more ingredient to soften the garlic flavor and also for thickening…….One person suggested adding mashed potatoes. Other suggestions were egg whites, yogurt, and mayonnaise. I made the toum and it came out probably the way everyone else’s toum sauce come out…….It came out thinner than what I would like and also far more garlicky than anyone on earth can handle. This stuff can kill all the vampires and maybe weeds and insects too!. ….I was planing on making the leeks and serving them up like Shawarma with the sumac onions, toum sauce and tehini sauce………..Then I got inspired from chef Neil Campbell’s recipe for charcoal roasted leeks with tarator and date brown butter….I thought that sounds really good but I don’t have any charcoal……….and I already had my toum sauce……..So I thought that I could change the toum sauce into tarator sauce. Tarator sauce is an emulsified sauce of nuts, garlic oil, and other things. Unlike toum sauce every recipe that I read was completely different but they all had nuts, oil, and garlic. Then I read latter that there are at least three main kinds of different variations of tarter that are different. The Turkish version is made with walnuts, garlic and sometimes bread. The Lebanon and Syrian versions are made with tahini instead of nuts and the Balkan style is more yogurt with cucumbers…….At the time I was in panic mode when I made tarator style sauce so I didn’t measure…… You got guesstimates there. Anyways….Leeks are very delicious with tarator and date brown butter. This recipe makes more tarator sauce and maybe more date brown butter than you might use but they are delicious together and would be great on most vegetables.

This recipe makes at least 4 servings

1 bundle of leeks (these were the biggest leeks ever with lots of green leaves that I boiled with vegetable bullion and pureed for other things) Greens trimmed off. Cut in half long ways. Tips cut off to fry crispy. I think this dish is best served at room temperature.

canola oil for frying.

1 head garlic – all the garlic cloves peeled and ground to paste

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

1/2 cup canola oil

1/2 large lemon – just the juice

1/2 large lemon – just the juice (this goes on the leeks latter)

1/2 cup toasted walnuts

1/2 cup roasted almonds

1/4 cup mayonnaise

1/4 cup tahini

1/4 cup yogurt

6 oz feta cheese

1/2 cup home made jalapeño brine

4 oz butter (I used unsalted but either works here)

2 Tablespoons date syrup (or to taste because they all taste different…some are sweeter and some taste more like dates)

1/4 teaspoon dried thyme

sea salt to taste

fresh ground black pepper to taste

Directions.

Make the date brown butter. In a sauce pan on medium heat add the butter. Let it go till it turns brown. Take off heat and add date syrup to taste.

Make the tarator sauce. Blend together the garlic, sea salt, canola oil, lemon juice, walnuts, almonds, mayonnaise, tahini, yogurt, feta cheese, and home made jalapeño brine till it’s like a thick sour cream consistency. Put to the side.

Put a fry pan on medium high heat with around three tablespoons of canola oil. When the oil is hot add the leeks cut side down and leave them there till the brown. Flip them over and add 1/2 cup of water and let them cook about ten minutes. (you can leave them that way but I prefer to cut them up because they are easier to eat that way. When they are done remove the braised leeks and put them to the side. Add salt, pepper, thyme, and remaining lemon juice to the leeks.

Clean out the pan and add enough oil to fry up the leek tips (around an inch) on medium-medium high heat. When the oil is hot add the leek tips. Fry till crisp (around seven minutes)

Put together however you like and enjoy.

When I was on vacation in Napa we enjoyed our dinner at La Torque. It was there that I tasted for the first time Fennel Marmalade. It was amazing with fish but I was thinking today that it would also be amazing stuffed into a turkey breast that I prepared in the sous vide. It would have also come out great doing the turkey breast stove top in a fry pan too. Anyway this is how I made fennel marmalade. I got 6 generous servings.

Ingredients for around 6 servings

2 fennel bulbs – core removed, remove dry outer coating, save fronds for garnish, slice thin

1 sweet onion – peeled, slice thin

1 hot pepper or to taste – sliced thin (I used 1/2 spicy banana pepper

1/4 cup sugar

2 lemons – the fresh squeeze juice and zest (save zest for garnishing)

2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

2 Tablespoons white wine

1/4 teaspoon white pepper

3/4 teaspoon sea salt (or to taste)

1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds – crushed fine

Directions

Everything (except garnishes fennel fronds & lemon zest) goes in a pot on medium high heat. You need to bring this to a boil and then reduce to simmer till thickened like marmalade. I think this took close to an hour.

Enjoy with fish, chicken, or turkey!

Enjoy!

When ever I don’t know what I want to make I have a list of creative chefs that I like. Safeway had a sale on corn so I needed a new idea for corn. I came across Yotam Ottolenghi & Ramael Scully’s recipe for corn cakes. They were seasoned a little differently than what I would normally do with fennel, cumin, celery seed, and tarragon. But what I really liked about the recipe was that it was nearly free of flour…..only two tablespoons for 5 ears of corn so it also seemed like a healthy recipe and that is a big bonus to me. I didn’t change much in the corn cake recipe….but I did make them much smaller, added more cheese to each one and didn’t bother buttering the cups I put them in. The beet-apple salad is suppose to be creamy with yogurt. I left the yogurt out so it would be just a nice light salad that isn’t drippy. The recipe is pretty easy but the hardest part of the recipe is to know how much to process (or blend) the corn mixture. You want the corn ROUGHLY CHOPPED BUT NOT A WET PUREE….some kernels will still be whole. This came out delicious…..The corn cake is sort very creamy and tasty. It did come out extremely delicate. I was sort of lucky that mine came out of the pan. I should have used cupcake liners. I thought that they would pop out more easily so I will recommend to use some sort of liner. The original recipe says 6 servings. I got 16 much smaller corn cakes. Depending on how you are serving them you will want to use either one or two a serving. Serving sizes are going to differ here. I don’t know if you want only one corn cake or three corn cakes. I’ll say that this recipe makes around 8 servings.

Ingredients for around 8 servings

5 corn on the cobs – peel corn, remove kernels with a knife or use 500g frozen corn kernels thawed

100g shallots – rough cut

3 garlic cloves – chopped

1 teaspoon fennel seeds – lightly toasted and coarsely crushed

1 teaspoon ground cumin – lightly toasted

1 teaspoon celery seeds

15g small tarragon leaves rough chopped

1 teaspoon baking powder

80g sweet butter melted (original recipe calls for 20g more butter to grease the molds….I used non -stick spray)

2 large eggs – yolks and whites separated

2 Tablespoons flour

90g feta cheese (original recipe calls for 60g…I think I actually went slightly over 90g) The cheese needs to be cut into a chunk for each corn cake. You can make any size you like because they are YOURS! The original recipe suggest 6-12 corn cakes…I got 16 corn cakes ……so I needed 16 chunks of cheese.

1 teaspoon course sea salt (or to taste)

1 Tablespoon Aleppo pepper (or to taste)

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper (or to taste)

1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper (or to taste)

2 raw beets – peeled and cut in very thin shreds

1 apple peeled, cored, cut in very thin shreds

1 Tablespoon sherry vinegar

2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 lemon (just the juice)

1 teaspoon fennel seeds – roasted and coarsely crushed

1/2 teaspoon celery seeds

15g parsley leaves – rough chopped

5g small baby basil leaves

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Line your cupcake pan with either cupcake liners, Elongated cupcake liners, or parchment. Then either butter the liners or spray with non stick spray.

Combine the corn kernels, shallots and garlic until the corn kernels are rough cut but not a wet paste.

add the fennel seeds, cumin, celery seeds, tarragon, baking powder, butter, egg yolks, salt, and peppers.

Whip the egg whites till stuff. Fold a little in till gone.

Time to fill the cupcake pan. I didn’t use liners so some of mine were a little harder to get out. I don’t want you to have any trouble so I recommend to use liners.

Next I squish down a chunk of feta into each of the corn cakes.

After I patted the edges down on top of the cheese.

Then I put them on the middle rack of my preheated 400 degree F oven for 25 minutes till they gave off aroma and looked toasty done. If you did yours bigger they will need more time. Maybe around 40 minutes.

While the corn cakes were in the over it only took a few minutes to make the beet-apple salad.

In a large bowl combine the beets, apple, sherry vinegar, oil, lemon juice, fennel seeds, celery seeds, parsley. Finish with the tiny basil leaves.

Soon the corn cakes will be coming out of the oven. They need around 10 minutes to cool a little before you can serve.

A special THANKS!!!! to Yotam Ottolenghi & Rameal Scully for sharing their AMAZING Recipe so I could come up with what I got here.

ENJOY!