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Posts tagged ‘mozzarella’

Jun 11

Snap pea, radish, mozzarella salad in Le Parfait (with a wine pairing!)

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On Sunday, I taught my last class before starting my summer hiatus. We have grand travel plans this summer, and who wants to be in a hot kitchen on a beautiful summer evening, anyway? Thinking about summer brings back memories of waddling around a kitchen last summer, hugely pregnant, teaching from a stool and trying to avoid picking up my heavy tubs of equipment and groceries. Ha! So glad that’s not me this time around. Instead, I’ll be cooking over a camp stove, eating dinner from a picnic table, and happily lugging around 22+ pounds of purely adorable baby chub in a hiking pack.

Before we head out on our adventure, I want to share with you a perfect summer recipe from this last class – it doesn’t require any heat, and packs perfectly for picnics or lunches or backyard barbecues. The class was a collaboration with my friends over at Table Wine, with special gifts from the French jar company Le Parfait. We put together a beautiful, summery salad of farmers’ market snap peas and radishes with torn fresh mozzarella, dressed with lemon and sesame and garnished with chive blossoms from Vitruvian Farms, and paired it with a lovely Italian white wine (more on that, below).  Read more

May 25

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Grilled radicchio with fresh mozzarella and garlic vinaigrette

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Two days ago we came back from a weekend trip to Pennsylvania for a wedding, and – just like that – it’s summer. We’ve eaten every meal since on the porch, and one of our first tasks when we returned was to exchange our long-faulty propane tank and fire up the grill for our standby summer dinner menu – a mess of grilled vegetables, some sort of starch (in this case, a quinoa pilaf), cheese (we do live in Wisconsin, after all), and white wine (Trader Joe’s new boxed sauvignon blanc is actually quite fantastic).

But lately I’ve had that itch – the one that drives me to pick out random things at the grocery store and try something entirely new – and this time it was (among other things) a small round head of radicchio that called out to me. I planned a slaw at first, but a quick perusing of cookbooks during Aldo’s pre-dinner nap led me to grill it in wedges. I made a quick vinaigrette (more on that later) and tossed it all with some fresh mozzarella and herbs, and it was an excellent part of what can otherwise be a fairly standard meal.  Read more

Jun 10

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Stuffed zucchini blossoms with mozzarella, basil, and cornmeal

I’m in Europe right now. Well, let’s hope to god that I’m in Europe right now, since due to internet magic I’m writing this before I go but it should be posting while I’m there, and I definitely should be there.

Let’s let that sink in for a minute. (The me being in Europe thing – I’m pretty sure we’re all way used to internet magic by now.)

Now that we’re all over the excitement of me being in Europe, lounging in heurigen and eating my weight in saurkraut on a daily basis, let’s move on to squash blossoms.

Fried_blossoms Read more