Creamy Tomato Aspic Salad クリーミートマトアスピックサラダ

My wife is a great fan of ribbon or aspic salad which now appears to be out of fashion. I also developed a liking for these aspic salads. Somewhere on-line, she came across a recipe for “creamy aspic salad”. She also had some V-8 juice left over from when she made ribbon salad so she decided to use it making this creamy aspic. As usual, although she got the idea to make the aspic from the recipe she modified it to her liking to accommodate the ingredients that were available. The most difficult part of making aspic is determining the correct amount of gelatin to use. Too much gelatin makes it like rubber and too little and it won’t hold together and keep its shape. This one was a bit on the softer side but had nice flavors and texture from using ricotta cheese and some crunch from celery.

Beside the celery, it has sliced and chopped green and black olive which gives a burst of salty flavor.

Ingredients:
3 cup V8 juice
2 packets of powdered gelatin (the end result was a bit soft so maybe another 1/2 packet of gelatin would make it firmer)
1 tbs sushi vinegar
2 tbs Worcestershire sauce
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup Ricotta cheese (I used 3/4 cup ricotta and 1/4 cup sour cream)
1 small onion (sweet or Vidalia onion), grated
2 stalks of celery, finely chopped
5 each Kalamata and oil cured olives, stone removed and chopped
5 pimento stuffed green olives, thinly sliced

Directions:
Soak the powdered gelatin in a cup of the V8 juice. Mix the remaining V8, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce and salt. Combine the ricotta and sour cream. Mix the cheese into the V8 vinegar mixture. Cut up and prepare the vegetables. Heat the soaked gelatin in the top of a double boiler until completely dissolved. (This is the only way I found to make sure all the gelatin is dissolved.) Add to the cheese mixture and stir to combine completely. Pour into the 9 X 13 pyrex pan and refrigerate. When the mixture becomes semi-solid stir in the vegetables. (This will encourage them to spread through out the mixture instead of sinking to the bottom.) Chill until fully set.

This is a very refreshing dish served cold on a hot summer day. The cheese and sour cream tone down the acidity of the V8 juice while ironically the sushi vinegar adds a nice acidic sharpness. The grated onion completely blends nicely into the mixture rather than standing out. The chopped veggies add a nice texture and the celery in particular really makes the dish. This is a good summer salad.

Couscous Salad クスクスサラダ

We tend to forget what food items we have especially those that are frozen or “hidden” in the back of the pantry. My wife found several boxes of couscous the other day. All of them were a bit past their “best-used-by” date which was 2017 for one and 2019 for the other two. We just threw 2017 out but decided to try 2019. We gave them the “sniff-test” and they passed without any rancid oil smell detected. So my wife cooked them up. But when we tasted they were clearly well past edible; they were terrible. We had been planning to make some kind of coucous salad and I had already cut up some black and green olives for it. So the next grocery delivery, we ordered several boxes of couscous so that we could finish the couscous salad.  (Ironically the whole purpose of the exercise was to clear out excess pantry goods either by using them or throwing them out. Instead, with the couscous we ended up throwing everything in the pantry out and simply replacing them). For some reason, plain couscous was not available so the boxes we got had various flavors one of which happened to be couscous with roasted garlic and olive oil. That is the one we used to complete the salad. It was remarkably good. In order to prevent the earlier problem we had with the oil in the couscous going rancid, I opened the two remaining boxes of couscous, put the contents in a separate special vacuum bag, vacuum packed them and froze them. The idea was that this should extend the “best-by” date by a few years.

My wife cooked up the couscous and by itself  it tasted really good but the salad tasted even better.

Ingredients:

One box (5oz) Near East couscous with roasted garlic and olive oil (I am sure any other flavored couscous will do)
1 1/4 cup chicken broth
2 tbs butter
Black and green olives, sliced
2/3 block of Feta cheese, crumbled
2 stalks of celery, finely chopped
1/2 Vidalia (or other sweet) onion, finely chopped

For dressing:

1 tbs Dijon mustard
1 tbs honey
2 tbs rice vinegar
1/4 -1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Cook the couscous according to the instructions on the package. In this case it was heat 1 1/4 cup water (we used chicken broth) to boiling add the butter and the contents of the included flavor package. Then stir in the couscous remove from the heat, cover and let it stand for 5 minutes. Fluff it up using a fork. Let it cool to room temperature.
Add the olives, onion, celery and feta cheese
Add the dressing and mix well
Taste and if needed add salt and pepper

This is a good salad. A bit filling but the combination of olives, feta cheese and slightly sweeet and tangy dressing really makes this dish.

Tomato ribbon salad version 2 トマトリボンサラダ V2

This is another variation of my wife’s famous ribbon salad. The red layers are tomato juice based aspic but  the cream cheese-based white layers are a bit more complex than the previous version. I helped by chopping up and slicing the ingredients. Initially, my wife was dissapointed since she expected the white layer to be more flavorful. But a few days later when we had this again, the ingredients had melded together and we could taste much more flavor.

Ingredients for Tomato aspic:
3 cups tomato juice (we used V-8)
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. sugar
2 tsp. Sushi vinegar
1 Tbs. Worcestershire sauce
Onion juice to taste (About 3 Tbs.
2 envelopes gelatin

Ingredients for white section
1 envelope of gelatin
1/4 cup cream
1 tub (8 oz.) or 1 block (8 oz.) Philadelphia cream cheese
1/4 cup sour cream
3 tbsp. mayonnaise
2-3 ribs celery, minced
1 med. green pepper, (jalapeño) finely chopped
2 med. onion, finely chopped
1/4-1/2 cup pimento stuffed olives, sliced
1/4-1/2 cup ripe (black) olives, sliced (we didn’t use because we didn’t have) 
(Optional) 1 ripe avocado, peeled & sliced (we did not use) 

Directions:
Soften gelatin in 1/2 cup of the tomato juice. Add mixture to the top of a double boiler. Heat until the gelatin melts. Put the rest of the tomato juice in a pan. Heat until all ingredients dissolved. Add the gelatin that has been melted in the double boiler. Chill 1/2 of the tomato aspic until set, in a 9 x 13 inch pyrex dish (below).

 

Soften the gelatin in the cream. Add mixture to the top of a double boiler. Heat until the gelatin melts. Mix cream cheese, sour cream and mayonnaise until smooth. Add the melted gelatin then the chopped celery, jalapeño, and onion. Spread cheese mixture over the congealed aspic. Add the olives on top of the cheese mixture. (Next time it would be better that the olives are finely diced.  Cut like this they made it hard to slice the ribbon salad into servings). (If using avocado lay the slices on top of the cheese mixture.) Refrigerate until firm (below).

Pour the second half of the tomato aspic gently over the avocado slices, to cover all. Cover with saran wrap and refrigerate until set.

Although this is a variation on the previous tomato ribbon salad, it is clearly in the same tradition. The red layer is much the same. The white layer is much softer. The olives are a great addition. They add a burst of saltiness. The flavors get much more pronounced after a day or two when the ingredients have had a chance to meld together. In general, this salad and its precursor are a light cool refreshing addition to a meal on a hot summer day.

Crispy Cheese round カリカリチーズ

 One evening, my wife served this as a surprise. According to her, she saw a similar dish on YouTube WebSpoon. The original used slices of pepperoni. Since she did not have pepperoni, she used black olives. It was crispy and cheesy with parmesan flavor coming through. Good appetizer with wine. 

I will ask how she made it.

Ingredients:
Grated cheese of your choice and taste. The amounts are arbitrary. I used:
Smoked gouda
Cheddar
Monterey Jack
Mozzarella
Parmesan

Tomato sauce
Black olives (or pepperoni)

Directions:
Grate the cheeses and mix together. Make little mounds of the cheese mixture on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. (The parchment paper is important because it makes it possible to remove the cheese once its melted). Spoon the tomato sauce on the mounds and top with whatever you are using as the topping; olives or pepperoni. Heat in the oven at 390 degrees for 10 minutes. The cheese will melt and brown.

These are a quick flavorful cheese snack for appetizer.  They make a nice alternative to the traditional cheese plate. They are chewy, salty and go perfectly with red wine. 

Olive and black pepper savory cookies

This is part of my wife's savory cookies project.  This is based on the recipe my wife found  in a blog called "Raspberry Cupcake". The original recipe calls for Kalamata olives but we did not have any so she used pimento stuffed green olive instead. (Hey! They were for my Martini!).

This is a savory shortbread and perfect with a glass of wine.

As usual, I ask my wife to fill in the rest.

Ingredients:

50 gm olives
1 1/4 cup (150 gm) flour
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper (or to taste)
1 stick (140 gm) butter
2 Tbs. sugar
1 large egg yolk

Directions:
Measure the dry ingredients (flour, soda, salt, pepper) in a bowl and set aside. Cream the butter, sugar and egg yolk until fully incorporated and fluffy. Add the dry ingredients to the the butter egg mixture. Fold in the olives. Roll the mixture into “logs” and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate the dough for at least an hour. (Dough can be refrigerated for up to week or frozen for up to a month.) To cook: preheat the oven to 350 F, slice the logs into 1/4 inch pieces and put them on a parchment covered cookie sheet. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes or until golden.

These cookies are spicy (from the pepper) with a  slight sweet overtone (from the sugar) and bright bursts of saltiness (from the olives). They make a nice addition to an appetizer tray served with other cheeses, prosciutto and a glass of red wine. 

No knead olive rye bread 捏ねないオリーブライ麦パン

This is a continuation of my saga on no-knead breads. The last time, I made olive bread following the original recipe, I felt that the amount of water was too much even though it turned out to be a wonderful bread. The dough was too wet to handle easily. We also thought that the combination of salty olives with no-knead rye bread would taste even better. So this is the version I baked. It came out looking nice and rustic.

After it completely cooled down, we cut into it. This time I used half and half of Divina Kalamata and green olives.

Ingredients
300 grams Bread flour 

100 grams Rye flour
2 grams instant yeast
200 grams black and green olives (Salt brine) or all one kind, roughly chopped,
300 grams cold (52-65F) water

*changes I made from the original olive bread recipe were replacing 100 grams of flour with rye flour and reducing the water to 300grams from 350 grams.

Directions
The directions are same as for the other no knead bread.

Mix everything in a bowl with a wooden spoon.
Cover with a plastic wrap and let it rise for 12-18 hours.
Remove the dough from the bowl to a well floured board. 

Bring the outer edges into the center to make a round shape. 
Transfer it to a well floured dish towel, dust the surface with more flour and fold the towel to cover. Let it rise for 1-2 hours.
Preheat the oven with the cast iron pot inside to 450F for at least 30 minutes prior to baking.

Place the dough in the heated pot, put on the lid and bake for 30 minutes.
Remove the lid and bake an additional 5-10 minutes.
Take out the bread and let it completely cool on a cooling rack.

The dough was plenty wet and sticky despite the 50gram reduction in water from the original olive bread recipe. The texture of the bread was similar and I think this is enough hydration. Again, the burst of flavor from the salt brine olives and the addition of rye really made this bread. We think, for us, this is a better olive bread. Next plan is to make a similar bread using the "karikari koume" カリカリ小梅 I made instead of olives.

No knead Olive bread 捏ねないオリーブパン

This is another variation of a "No knead" bread. This turned out to be an excellent olive bread but the dough was extremely wet and difficult to work with.

Since the olives are salty I didn’t add any additional salt. It has a nice texture and the taste of the olives was really nice.

Few pimentos got out into the bread.

Ingredients
400 grams bread flour
3 grams instant yeast
200 grams salt brined olives (I used 80% Divina Kalamata olivs and 20 % pimento stuffed green olives), roughly chopped
350 grams of cold water (50-55F)

Directions
Same as other no knead breads. 

Mixed everything in a bowl with a wooden spoon. This is definitely a wet dough since the recipe called for 50 grams more water than I used in the previous versions of no kneed bread I have made . 
Cover with a plastic wrap and let it rise for 12-18 hours.
Remove the dough from the bowl to a well floured board.
Bring the outer edges into the center to make a round shape.
Transfer it to a well floured dish towel, dust the surface with more flour and fold the towel to cover. Let it rise for 1-2 hours.
Preheat the oven with the cast iron pot inside to 450F for at least 30 minutes prior to baking.
Place the dough in the heated pot, put on the lid and bake for 30 minutes
Remove the lid and bake an additional 5-10 minutes.
Take out the bread and let it completely cool on a cooling rack.

Since this was such a wet dough, the dish towel I used for the second rising was soaked, the dough stuck to it and it was almost impossible to place the dough in the hot cast iron pot. But, once in, it baked nicely. Because of the high hydration ratio, the inside the bread is really tender and the crust is nice. The bursts of olive and salty flavors are great. We really like this bread but I may reduce the water to 300 grams just because it is so difficult to handle the wet and sticky dough. I also would like to replace 100 grams of wheat flour with rye flour which may make this bread even better.

Basil pesto pizza ペストジェノベェーゼピッザ

Every year we used to plant basil in our herb garden but, in general, it did not do well. Maybe it was too much sun; it bolted very quickly and the leaves were tough.  So, we went back to buying basil in small packets from the grocery store. Most of these store-bought basils clearly had a hard life. They were a bit pathetic and already wilted by the time they came to reside in our refridgerator.  Since, due to covid, we have not been going to the grocery stores often nowadays, and we could not get out to buy herbs for our garden, my wife decided to try rooting some of these sad store-bought basils. She was generally successful. About 70-80% of the basil she tried, developed roots and 95% of those really started to grow after she transplanted them in soil. (The ones she planted in top soil did not do quite as well as those planted in potting soil). So now, we have a small collection of basil pots sunning themselves in the kitchen windows. 

Since the plants were in need of trim, one day my wife recruited me to make pesto. The above is after my wife harvested leaves for the pesto. I made pesto in standard way (Just add basil, pine nuts, garlic, and salt into the mini food processor and add olive oil while the processor is running. Finish by adding grated Parmesan cheese). Next question; what to do with all this pesto? She then suggested making a pesto pizza. Which I did (shown below). 

This was entirely her idea. She asked me to use both fresh and low-moisture mozzarella cheese and two kind of olives (Karamata and anchovy stuffed green olives, which we happened to have). I brushed the dough with garlic infused oil, placed the slices of mozzarella cheese and spread the pesto over the cheese slices, then placed the olives. This came out rather nice with a fresh basil taste that worked well with the olives and mozzarella. Of course, we had to make our usual Margherita pizza as well. (Note the basil chiffonaid on top).

So, this is a good use of the basil forests now growing on our kitchen window sill. We restrained ourselves to having just one slice from each pizza, so we would be sure to have left overs to crisp up in the toaster oven during the week. Of course, to be heart-healthy, we had red wine which went so well with pizzas as usual.

"Rescued" sour cream bread "救助”されたサワークリームパン

Due to the shortage of yeast during the Covid-19 pandemic, my wife has been relying on biga/poolish as the leavening agent for bread. She has experimented with substituting preferments in various of her favorite bread recipes with great success. So she decided to try making sour cream bread based on a recipe in "Beard on Bread" using biga. She made the biga the night before and by morning it had puffed up nicely. She used it to make the dough; making adjustments for the moisture and flour already in the biga. She made the dough in the morning but by 5:00 PM basically nothing had happened. The dough sat sullenly in the bottom of the bowl just basically where it had been in the morning. We consulted each other about what to do with the recalcitrant dough. Should we give it a time out by just putting it into the fridge and letting it spend the night getting its act together and hopefully rising? Then I suggested, "Maybe we should just cook it now like a focaccia". That sounded like a plan to us so I rolled it out on parchment paper. (This is a new technique I read about recently for getting these types of bread in and out of the oven and found it works very well). We decided to top it with cream cheese and black olives.

This is the loaf after it was cooked. It had some rise, at least it wasn't flat like a cracker.

Ingredients:
Biga:
1 3/4 cups flour
2 cups sour cream
1/8 tsp yeast

Dough:
biga
3 tbs. sugar
2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking soda
3 to 4 1/2 cups flour

Directions:

The night before baking mix together the biga, cover it with towels and leave at room temperature overnight. Next day in an electric mixer with a dough hook combine the biga, sugar, salt, baking soda and flour into the smooth elastic dough. Knead on the dough hook for 7 to 10 minutes. Remove from the bowl and hand knead a few minutes more. Put into the bowel and lightly coat with oil. Let rise.

In this case it did not rise. After some consternation and discussion it was decided the bread had been re-designated as focaccia and I stepped up to "center stage". I  took the dough out of the bowl in which it had spent the day and transferred it to a piece of parchment paper (big enough to hold the final rectangle). I stretched the dough into a rectangle shape, then folded all sides inward and stretched it again to make the same sized rectangle. I repeated this 2 times and ended up with the focaccia shape shown above. I covered it with plastic wrap and a towel and let it rise (hopefully) for another hour. Meanwhile I preheated the oven with a baking stone in it to 390 F. After one hour, I pressed the dough with my finger tips like I would do with focaccia bread. I brushed the surface with olive oil. At my wife's suggestion, I put small cubes of cream cheese and slices of black olives on top of the loaf. I transferred it still on the parchment paper using a metal pizza paddle to the baking stone and baked it for 30 minutes.

Surprisingly this bread was very good! The texture was dense and chewy but soft at the same time. The basic recipe was slightly sweet with a slight tang from the sour cream. Those flavors came through and went extremely well with the saltiness of the olives and the creaminess of the cream cheese. This turned out to be a very good breakfast bread that went well with coffee. It is a prime example of how "forgiving" yeast breads can be. We have taken to calling it "rescued" bread.  We wouldn't mind making it again but we are not sure we could reproduce the "mistake" that resulted in this version of the bread rather than the one we were expecting. We think maybe the ratio of biga to flour was not correct and most of the gluten was eaten by the resulting yeast so the bread couldn't rise. (Just a theory. Who knows? We'll be working on this.)

Olive brine marinated pork tenderloin with cuscus オリーブブライン漬け豚ヒレ

This is continuation of my search for another way to cook pork tenderloins. A few days ago I used the trimmings from two pork tenderloins, I prepared to make "Pork, potato, and green bean stir fry". The next day, I made "Seared Pork tenderloin with smoked paprika and oregano 焼き豚フィレ肉、薫製パプリカ、オレガノ味" from one of the tenderloins. That left one last tenderloin. I came across this recipe in "Food and Wine" magazine. It uses the brine from a jar of olives (I suppose it is made of water, vinegar and salt with added olive flavor from the marinated olives) as a marinade for pork tenderloin. We were inspired by this recipe so we made this dish and served it with couscous. The original recipe called for white beans as the side but we happened to have a box of couscous which recently passed its "best used by" date. (Actually that date was one year ago but in our household that is "recent"). The brining did make the pork more succulent but did not add much flavor despite the addition of ground sage and lemon zest to the brine.

We added all the juice, olives and roasted garlic from the roasted pork to the couscous which made it very flavorful and moist. (We tend to avoid dry flakey couscous which we found from experience can easily become uncomfortably air borne if you happen to inhale slightly at the wrong time while eating it). Although the color could have been a bit better, we will call this dish a sucess.

Since we do not believe in "searing" the surface of the meat before baking, I skipped the searing step.

Ingredients:
One trimmed and prepared pork tenderloin
Several green olives, pitted and smashed
Several cloves of garlic, skin on
1 tbs olive oil

For marinade:
1/4 cup of brine from a jar of olives (we had sweet red pepper stuffed green olives which I use when I have a martini).
1 tbs extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp ground sage
Lemon zest from one lemon using a micrograter.
1/2 tsp Kosher salt

Salt and pepper for seasning.

Directions:
Place the marinade and the tenderloin in a Ziploc bag. Removed the air, close the bag and marinate for 3 hours in the refrigerator.
Preheat oven (I used our toaster oven in convection mode) to 375F.
Remove the pork from the marinade, blot with a paper towel, coat with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Coat the garlic cloves with olive oil.
Place the pork, olives, and garlic on a baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes or until the temperature in the thickest part of the pork registers 145F.
Let it rest for 5-10 minutes on the cutting board.

Meanwhile, we prepared a box of couscous according to the directions (we used chicken broth and pats of butter). When done, we fluffed up the couscous using a fork, added the roasted garlic by squeezing out the soft center of the clove leaving the skin behind. Then we added the olives and whatever juice from the meat that accumulated while it was resting.

Since we are not really into brining meats, this is a quick and easy way to do it. As far as we could tell the main impact of the brining was on the texture of the meat rather than its flavor. The meat was moist and nice. This is a new for us but we are not sure we will do this again.

Grilled feta, olive and grapes

My wife found this recipe in the food section of the Washington Post. It's a rather simple dish but we really like it.  It makes a good appetizer and goes well with wine. We served it with mini-baguette.

The original recipe suggested cooking this in a cast iron skillet. We thought that might be too big for the quantity we wanted to make so we cooked this is a small anodized cast aluminum pan (this was a Japanese style pot (mini version) with a wooded lid for an individual "nabe" dish) which worked perfectly.

The cubes of feta cheese get brown and crispy on the outside but soft inside. My wife thought it is also good just to enjoy without bread. The combination of spices (fennel seeds, red pepper flakes and ground black pepper), salty olives and sweet grapes all worked well.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, plus more as needed
1/2 cup (2 3/4 ounces) seedless red grapes, (we cut the amount in half).
1/3 cup (1 1/2 ounces) pitted and halved Kalamata olives. (We used a combination of the different olives we had on hand. We cut some of the large ones in half.)
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds, crushed
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
Freshly ground black pepper
8 to 10 ounces feta cheese (in a block)
Good, crusty bread slices, for serving

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees with the rack in the middle (we used our toaster oven on convection mode on the bottom rack). Oil a small, oven-proof casserole dish or cast-iron pan. Add the grapes, olives, 1 tablespoon olive oil, fennel seeds, red pepper flakes and a few grinds of black pepper, and stir to combine.
Break the block of feta up into irregular pieces, then nestle them among the grapes and olives. Drizzle with more olive oil, then bake, 20 to 25 minutes, until the grapes are softened and the feta is browned in spots.

This is a really good dish. We had only a small portion the night we made it and reheated it later in the microwave which worked well. My wife kept reminding me as I made the dish, "a little bit of fennel goes a long way". Don't over do it' the fennel actually made the dish. The combination of fennel, olives and grapes were made for each other and the total went remarkably well with red wine. Definitely this will join to our line up of "regular" dishes.