I had some yuzu juice that I had to use up and I thought it would go well with beets so I made infused red beets and marinated chioggia (candy stripe) beets with yuzu, honey, and ginger. This flavor goes pretty well with melon sweet basil and pistachios. You can add any greens that you have to go with it. I made a Chinese Mustard deviled eggs to go with it. I didn’t add that recipe because I only added Chinese Mustard to the egg yolks and nothing else. The egg whites were seasoned with furikake and the yolk part was deviled with togarashi seasoning.

Ingredients for around 4 servings

1 lb red beets – peeled and cut in slices

1 chioggia beet – peeled and thinly sliced across the beet

1 cup + 3 Tablespoons yuzu juice separated

1/4 cup + 1 Tablespoon honey separated

4 Tablespoons + 2 Tablespoons rice wine vinegar separated

1/2 teaspoon + 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger separated

1/4 teaspoon + pinch ground white pepper separated

1/2 teaspoon + 1/4 teaspoon Red Boat Salt separated

1/2 a small sweet melon of any sort. Make melon balls

1/4 cup torn basil

2 oz salted roasted pistachios – lightly crushed

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F

Mix together the marinate for the chioggia (candy stripe) beets. In a small bowl mix together the 3 Tablespoons yuzu juice, 2 Tablespoons rice wine vinegar, 1 Tablespoon honey, 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger, 1/4 teaspoon Red Boat salt, and a pinch of white pepper. Mix well and add this and the thinly sliced chioggia beets to a quart size ziplock bag to marinate in the refrigerator.

Place red beet slices in a mostly single layer in a pan or baking dish.

In a bowl mix together the remaining yuzu juice, honey, vinegar, ginger, pepper, and salt. Pour this over the beets and cover the pan or dish. Place this in the oven on a middle rack till beets are tender (around an hour). You can serve the beets either warm or chilled with the marinated beets, melon balls, basil and pistachios. Add a few greens if you like.

SERVE.

Enjoy!

I was reading recipes and I wanted to do something great with cauliflower. Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Gordon Ramsey, and another chef George Blanc do cauliflower with caper raisin sauce (so that must be the thing that makes cauliflower sing?). The caper sauces differ slightly and one chef pickles the cauliflower and the other chef frys the cauliflower (I haven’t found chef Blanc’s recipe yet). I had three kinds of cauliflower so I thought that I should do three different cauliflowers. I roasted around a third of the cauliflower, pickled about a third of the cauliflower and pureed a round a third of the cauliflower. I picked Jean Georges Vongerichten’s recipe for the Caper Raisin Sauce because it sounded tastier to me.

Ingredients for around 12 servings

3 heads of cauliflower (I used one large white and a small purple and small green cauliflower) – break down to florets

3 cups apple cider vinegar

1/4 cup sugar

1 Tablespoon kosher salt

1/2 teaspoon hot pepper flakes

1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic

1/2 teaspoon granulated onion

1/2 teaspoon ground mustard

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

1/2 teaspoon Old Bay Seasoning

around 3/4 of a cauliflower (for puree)

1 oz unsalted butter

1 cup milk

1/4 cup cream cheese

1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper

2 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

2 Tablespoons boiling water

2 pinches saffron

1 teaspoon smoked paprika

1 red onion thinly sliced

1/3 cup capers – drained

1/4 cup golden raisins

3/4 cup water

6 Tablespoons unsalted butter – room temperature

1 teaspoon sherry vinegar

Directions

Pickle around one third (or a little less) of the cauliflower. Combine the vinegar, sugar, salt, hot pepper flakes, granulated garlic, granulated onion, ground mustard, ground black pepper, ground coriander, and Old Bay Seasoning. Bring this mixture to a boil and then pour it over up to a third of the cauliflower florets. Let this sit out an hour. After an hour you can drain it. Either use it right away or refrigerate.

Make the cauliflower puree. I guess it doesn’t matter what color you use but I wouldn’t mix up the colors. I had a very large white cauliflower so I used maybe three quarters of the white cauliflower for the puree. Put the florets in a sauce pan with the butter and milk. Cook till soft on medium high. Then blend with the cream cheese and white pepper.Use when ready or refrigerate.

Make the saffron smoked paprika roasted cauliflower.

Set oven to 400 degrees F.

Combine the olive oil, boiling water, saffron, and smoked paprika.

Spread out the cauliflower florets and red onion slices and pour the saffron smoked paprika mixtures evenly over the florets and onions. Place pan on a middle rack in the oven and cook till cooked threw and slightly charred. (this took 20 minutes in my oven…yours may differ)

Make Jean-Goerges Vongerichten’s Caper Raisin Sauce

Put the drained capers, raisins, water in a sauce pot and simmer for around 15 minutes. blend and slowly add the butter one tablespoon at a time while blending. Add the sherry.

Serve together.

A special Thanks to Jean George Vongerichten for sharing his FORKING amazing Caper Raisin Sauce recipe so I could come up with this.

Here is DELICIOUS Sazon Spiced Acorn Squash with Cilantro Chimichurri. You can buy Sazon (General Spanish and or Mexican Seasoning Salt) but here we mix our own because we already have the spices. These flavors annatto, garlic, cumin, and coriander are delicious on acorn squash and the cilantro chimichurri just elevates it even more. Acorn squash do differ greatly in size. The one squash I used was large for an acorn squash. For me it makes 4 smaller side servings.

Ingredients for around 4 side servings

1 large acorn squash – washed well, cut in half (stem to tip) seeds and seed membranes removed and then cut into one inch slices

1/2 teaspoon mild chili powder

1/2 teaspoon ground annatto

1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic

1/4 teaspoon cumin

1/4 teaspoon coriander

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

2 Tablespoons canola oil

1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar

2 1/2 oz cilantro leaves and fine stems – chopped

1 Tablespoon dried oregano

5 garlic cloves – ground to paste

1 small-medium onion (around 6 oz) chopped

2 small hot peppers – chopped (I used chili de arbols)

2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

4 Tablespoons red wine vinegar

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 teaspoon sea salt

optional – 2oz roasted salted pepitas (pumpkin seeds) for finishing

optional pickled red onions for serving

Directions

Set oven to 475 F. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper

In a small mixing bowl combine the chili powder, annatto, granulated garlic, cumin, coriander, black pepper, salt, canola oil, and apple cider vinegar. Set squash slices in a single layer on parchment lined baking sheet. Paint the contents of the small bowl on the squash on both sides. Use up the whole mixture. Put the squash pan on an upper middle rack for 15 minutes. Flip the squash pieces over and cook another 15 minutes or until squash looks slightly charred.

While the squash is cooking make the cilantro chimichurri.

Blend together the cilantro, oregano, garlic, onion, hot peppers, oil, vinegar, salt and pepper.

SERVE squash with the chimichurri. Add optional roasted salted pepitas and pickled red onions if desired.

This delicious and everyone will enjoy!

I came across chef Josh Egglton’s recipe for Charred white and green asparagus with pickled egg and pesto when I was searching for another really great asparagus recipe. I never heard of a brined and pickled egg yolk before so I had to try this recipe. I already had hazelnut pesto that I made recently that I had to use so I didn’t make chef Egglton’s for the pesto. I pretty much followed the brined and pickled egg recipe because I didn’t know how to do that. The only minor difference was that I didn’t have a teaspoon of pickling spice so I used a pinch of each of the ingredients that picking spice is made of (mustard seed, allspice, coriander seeds, red pepper flakes, ginger, bay, cinnamon and clove). I’m sure mine might taste slightly different but it still came out amazing. I did have one issue with the pickled yolk. The recipe is written that you are suppose to brine the eggs for 30 minutes and then pickle them for 30 minutes for runny and longer (it does say how long..) for less runny. I do note that I wanted less runny so I pickled for 45 minutes. Mine came out with a jammy surface but very delicate (they broke very easy) and were runny but very delicious. I will try them again but next time I might try an hour of pickling and see what happens.

Ingredients for around 4 servings

4 eggs (just the yolks)

4 cups water

3 1/2 oz sea salt

8 oz sugar

10 2/3 oz white wine vinegar

1 teaspoon pickling spice (I did a pinch of mustard seeds, 4 allspice berries, coriander seeds, red pepper flakes, ginger, bay leaf, cinnamon, 2 cloves)

1 sprig rosemary

1 sprig fresh thyme

1 bay leaf

2 black peppercorns (I upped to 3)

28 oz asparagus (I did two bunches) – hard woody ends removed

1 large shallot – fine chopped

1 teaspoon olive oil

sea salt to taste

lemon juice to taste

heaping 1/4 cup pesto (mine was around a bunch parsley (just leaves), handful of toasted hazelnuts, a good amount of grated parmigiana, smallest amount of garlic (you can leave out) very small amounts of salt and pepper and just enough extra virgin olive oil to blend.

Directions

Make brine for egg yolks.

Combine the water with salt and 1 2/3 Tablespoons of sugar, rosemary, thyme, bayleaf and peppercorns in a pan. Heat till sugar is dissolved. Cover and leave pan to the side to cool.

Make the pickling liquid.

White wine vinegar, remaining sugar, and pickling spice go in a pan. Stir some. You heat it till the sugar is dissolved. Leave to cool. Strain and then set to the side.

As soon as the brine is cool. Separate the eggs and carefully place the egg yolks in the brine for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes the egg yolks get placed in the pickling liquid for another 30 minutes or longer for harder.

Make the asparagus tartare. Take two asparagus and slice extra thin and mix with the finely chopped shallots. Season lightly with some sea salt.

Boil the asparagus for a minute. Then shock them with ice water. Dry them off.

Griddle, fry or grill the asparagus till you get them charred.

Dress the asparagus with lemon and oil and very lightly with sea salt and pepper.

Serve them with the brined/pickled eggs and the pesto.

A special THANKS! to chef Eggleton for his Amazing recipe!