Swapper profile: Andrea Bornschlegel + Arugula-Kumquat Salad with Roasted Salmon and Horseradish Sauce Recipe

I am so pleased to introduce Andrea Bornschlegel in this post, our first swapper profile in too long. I first met Andrea at our very first swap (3 years ago, what?!?), where she wowed us with the delicious flavor combos of her liqueurs such as Spiced Orange, Basil Ginger, and Vanilla Limoncello. She reduxed her liqueurs at a more recent swap, also serving up a delicious Gold Rush Cocktail for potluck consumption. Her bacon jam at the June swap last summer had just the right balance of sweet and salty, and Andrea brought tasty jars of bourbon and Meyer lemon caramel to the most recent swap. I've been lucky enough to score Andrea's goods in the past, and I must confess I was loathe to not bid on the caramel, but we were leaving town shortly afterwards for a month, and I feared I would not be able to savor it all before leaving (silly me). Her incredible sounding salad recipe below features a few of my favorite things...salmon and kumquats to start...and will definitely make it onto our dinner table very, very soon. Read on for her culinary inspirations and the makings of a perfect springtime meal! 

Andrea making liqueurs: kitchen alchemy at work

Name: Andrea Bornschlegel

Home (+ hometown swap): Mountain View, CA

Profession: Finance & accounting for startups

How did you first get involved in food swapping? How long ago?  I read a NY Times article about swapping and searched for local events. I went to the very first swaps in both SF and the East Bay in the spring of 2011, but haven’t been to a great number overall. I’ve considered trying to start up a Silicon Valley swap – if anyone is interested, please contact me!

What did you make for the last food swap and what inspired your choice?  I made Meyer lemon caramel and bourbon-cayenne caramel, as I’d been experimenting with different flavors. I do homemade liqueurs most often, but hadn’t given myself enough lead time last month. 

Andrea's Meyer Lemon and Bourbon Cayenne Caramels!

What’s your favorite thing about swapping?  The people, the inspiration, the goods! I especially like getting an unusual ingredient to play with (fennel pollen, rose geranium) rather than something to just eat. But it’s all good.

Who or what most influences your cooking?  Reading, reading, reading to expand my repertoire, and sharing ideas with friends and family. This year, I’ve been cooking things I’ve never touched before (sunchokes, celeriac, kumquats, pork belly) and doing projects like home-cured duck prosciutto and  homemade ricotta. For everyday cooking, my husband wants healthy meals while I want cheese, butter, bacon, and more cheese (with chocolate on top), and I realize he’s probably smarter, so I try to head that direction.

Bacon jam in the making

Bacon jam for sampling at the swap

What’s your favorite kitchen tool?  My mandoline, for super-easy, super-thin slicing. My dad bought it for me years ago. I like it much more now that I’ve bought a protective glove and don’t have to use the safety holder. Also, my microplane and a little julienne tool my mother-in-law bought me. I guess I like things small and thin and shredded?

Your current flavor or ingredient obsession? I’ve previously always required my eggs to be cooked hard, but somehow in the past year I’ve discovered the joys of runny yolks. Currently eating them on any kind of vegetable (but mostly asparagus) and/or any kind of starch, with truffle oil.

Biggest food surprise?  No-knead bread – it’s soooo easy! Even my first try at it was heaven, and even a disappointing loaf is fabulous.

If the Rapture came tomorrow, what would your last meal on earth be?  Oh, too hard! Fried chicken, various potatoes, scallops, salmon with vanilla sauce, several porky items. Chocolate lava cake with ginger ice cream. Inventive craft cocktails.

When I'm not in the kitchen, I'm...traveling, seeing friends, reading, doing crossword puzzles, running or at the gym, wasting time on the internet.

Favorite local fod experience:  Spreading a beach towel on the kitchen table for a Dungeness crab, artichoke, sourdough feast. Walking to downtown Mountain View and eating al fresco.

The Gold Rush Cocktail was a welcome addition to the bar...

...and coaxed people to the swap tables for her liqueurs for sure!

A sampling of Andrea's liqueurs - photo by Becky Spencer (EBCA swap)

Recipe by Andrea:

I made this up on Valentine’s Day (like I said, my husband likes healthy meals). Sorry for lack of amounts, but it’s a salad, it’s flexible – do what you prefer depending on how many you’re serving.

Arugula-Kumquat Salad with Roasted Salmon and Horseradish Sauce

(loosely inspired by “Salad for Dinner,” Tasha DeSerio)

Salad:

Arugula (or butter lettuce, romaine, or spinach if you prefer)

Fresh kumquats, sliced thinly or quartered, discarding big seeds – more than you think is reasonable ;-)

Fennel bulb, core removed, sliced very thinly

Roasted beets, chunked (Trader Joe’s carries cooked vacuum packed beets)

Avocado, chunked

Carrot curls (using veg peeler) or very thin julienne

Red onion, raw or quickly pickled in water/cider vinegar/sugar mixture (maybe 1C - 1/4C - 1/4C)

Salmon:

Wild salmon, 5-8 oz per person, roasted per your usual method or whatever looks simple on Google

Salad dressing:

50/50 roasted walnut oil and Trader Joe’s orange muscat champagne vinegar or other mild, fruity vinegar (more oil if your vinegar is stronger); thyme fresh or dried; a little Dijon or dried mustard; S&P

Horseradish sauce:

3/4 C plain greek yogurt (or strained a bit if a thinner style) (or thinned crème fraîche for decadence)

1-2 T prepared horseradish

1-2 shallots, minced fine

1-2 cloves garlic, minced fine

1 T champagne or sherry vinegar

1 T olive oil

Chopped chives and/or basil

Combine all salad ingredients in a large bowl and dress very lightly.  Plate dinner-size salad portions covering most of the plate, overlap salmon a bit, top the salmon with ~2 T sauce, and pass the rest of the sauce at the table.

Tasting Jerusalem! Roasted Cauliflower and Hazelnut Salad

It's dubious as to whether I can really take on another communal cooking project, but my love of Yottam Ottolenghi and the fun approach of the Tasting Jerusalem group (who were just featured in the New York Times' Recipe Lab!) has had me salivating from the sidelines for the past few months, coaxing me to join in the fun. I had the best of intentions for May's baking round (this phenomenal looking Chocolate Krantz Cake will still happen) and preserved lemons round too (a fridge full of Meyers didn't even tip the balance), but this month it's salads on the menu, and it all came together.

Cauliflower is one of my favorite vegetables. It like to think it hearkens back to warm memories of my Oma (German grandmother) making her cheesy, delicious, melt-in-your-mouth Gebakene Kohl (baked cauliflower), but whatever the genesis I'm always keeping an eye out for new recipes and ways of preparing it.

Without any conscious forethought to the recipes in Jerusalem, I picked up a small but perfect cauliflower at the farmers market and tucked it into the fridge. A couple days later I leafed through the cookbook pages again and saw I had bookmarked the Roasted Cauliflower and Hazelnut Salad. Perfection! With the exception of sherry vinegar (I subbed red wine vinegar), I even had all the ingredients on hand.

Even though the ingredients seem autumnal, this is a great summer recipe. The roasting is easy and fast, allowing you to prep the rest of ingredients at the same time, which means you end up with a healthy, beautiful salad on the table with very little active cooking time.

Below is my ode in images, with a link to the recipe at the end.

Roasted Cauliflower and Hazelnut Salad

I was particularly wowed by this salad, because it calls upon ingredients I would never have thought to put together but which effortlessly complement each other. With allspice and cinnamon, spices I typically don't use in salads, the layers of flavor were at once light and elegant. It was flavorfully rich, but easy to eat. Once again, Jerusalem hits one out of the park.

Find the recipe here.

And speaking of spices, Tasting Jerusalem's focus for August will be Bahārāt, a spice blend I look forward to experimenting with!

Cook the Books 2013: Salty Sweet Seaweed Butter Cookies and more from Around My French Table

After doing both Cook It! 2012 and a Cooking The Breakfast Book collaboration last year, I was thrilled to see a new communal cooking project emerge for 2013. Dreamed up by Grow and Resist and Oh, Briggsy..., Cook the Books! A Cookbook Challenge is a creative and fun way to get people to use the cookbooks they own, or try out new ones, together.

First up for January was Dorie Greenspan's Around My French Table. This is a delightful and inspiring cookbook. I was immediately struck by her clear, no-nonsense tone, making French cooking feel very accessible. My first pass through the book also left me feeling like I wanted to make a good 20 or so dishes immediately. A lot appeals, and I also like her approach of including dishes that may not be French in origin, but that have become part of the culinary and cultural fabric of the country.

While I did make a number of recipes from the book (more on that below), I decided to highlight the magical butter cookies known as sablés here, because they are both fun to make and fun to eat. After you've tasted these flavor grenades it'll come as no surprise to hear they are très populaire in France.

Instead of the toasted nori suggested in the book, I happened to be at Trader Joe's and thought a package of their Roasted Seaweed would be perfect. Lo and behold, they have a new seaweed snack on their shelves that was destined for these cookies. Their Sweet Sesame Seaweed doesn't come in sheets, but instead in a mass of crispy, crinkly blades (yup, that's what the leaves of seaweed are called...don't ask me how I know or recall that bit of trivia...), that at first proved themselves difficult to chop, but excellent for making a mess. After a couple tries resulting in flying seaweed bits, I turned to a technique I use for grinding whole allspice, and happily it was very effective. Place ingredient (in this case seaweed bunches) between two sheets of parchment paper and using a rolling pin, run it over the contents until broken down to desired grain/consistency.

Don't kid yourself. These are called butter cookies, because that's their main ingredient. Get over it and get creative with how you flavor them.

I made three different flavors, and brought them as slice-and-bake logs to our most recent food swap—where they were hit!

The Cheez-it-ish Crackers Greenspan features are basically like more delicious Cheez-its, with more butter. I used a raw Emmenthal and it was perfect. The lemon ones (not included in this book, but a variation suggested in her master sablé recipe) were made with fruit from my mom's tree. This made them just that much more special. And the seaweed ones were all that I imagined.

  

Salty Sweet Seaweed Butter Cookies
Adapted from Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan

6 tablespoons (3/4 stick), unsalted butter, room temperature
3 tablespoons finely chopped toasted nori, or other seaweed of choice (see above)
2 teaspoons fleur de sel or 1 1/2 teaspoons fine sea salt
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon confectioner's sugar
1 large egg yolk
1 1/2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Optional: flaky sea salt, such as Maldon, for sprinkling

This dough is easy to make by hand using a rubber spatula if your butter is really soft. In a large bowl, mix the butter, salt and chopped seaweed together until smooth and creamy in texture. 

Stir in the remaining ingredients following this sequence, but avoid overmixing or overworking the dough: sugar, egg yolk, olive oil, and flour. 

When it is smooth, divide into half (or thirds) and roll each piece into a slender log based on the size you want your finished cookies.

Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for at least one hour, and up to 5 days. You may also keep in the freezer for 2 months.

When you are ready to bake them, preheat the oven to 350° and line a baking sheet with a silicone mat or parchment paper.

Slice each log into cookies "on the scant side of 1/4 inch" (description courtesy of David Lebovitz, who gave Greenspan this recipe). Place them on your baking sheet, cooking only one batch at a time on a rack centered in your oven.

Sprinkle the optional sea salt on top of each cookie at this stage if using.

Bake the cookies for 12 to 14 minutes. They are done when they are slightly firm but not colored.

Transfer to a rack to cool, and cook remaining batches as and when needed.

Cooking Note: The flavor of the Sweet Sesame Seaweed was perfectly suited to use in this recipe. That said, I definitely plan to experiment a bit and will try the toasted nori method to compare. I also wonder if furikake might be a transformative addition?

Other dishes I cooked from this book include:

Orange-Scented Lentil Soup - I love lentils so am always looking out for new ways to prepare them. This recipe immediately tempted my taste buds, and being citrus season, how could I refuse them? My favorite way to pimp this soup out? Top it with a dollop of yogurt, some fresh dill, smoked sea salt, and a bit of hot sauce. (PS It is very hard to make a pureed lentil soup look good).

Lime and Honey Beet Salad - Nice, bright and simple. They way beets should be served in my humble opinion. I added a bit more lime juice than the recipe called for, and used some lime, cilantro and gingergrass flavored salt I had on hand.

Dilled Gravlax with Mustard Sauce - I left this to cure for 72 hours, which concluded this evening...but I didn't tackle the job until after dinner, and was too full to try it. I'm betting it won't disappoint.