Blueberry Salmon Avocado green salad

An ample salad for a crowd to get a taste. This is a scaled up and tossed version of a composed salad I did last year.

First allow me to review my Master Salad Schema:

• Fresh greens
• Vegetable(s)
• A fruit
• A meat
• A nut, toasted
• A soft to medium cheese
• Grated Hard cheese(s)
• A small amount of dressing
• Fresh Ground Coriander

Depending on what is in season and what is on hand I vary the details and try to fill out the other choices to balance. In this case I used:

• One head each of red leaf, green leaf, romaine lettuce
• Two carrots, scrubbed, chopped, soaked in white balsamic vinegar
• Fresh blueberries, and sliced avocado
• Smoked Salmon (skinned, flaked, no bones)
• Toasted pecans coarsely chopped
• Fresh lemon curdled cheese
• Grated Parmesan and Hirten Hard cheeses
• A couple tablespoons of dressing (rice wine vinegar, a splash of apple cider vinegar, a little water, orange juice, 4 drops of orange essence, micro-planned ginger, roasting salt, hazelnut oil, walnut oil, olive oil, a little sesame oil)
• Fresh Ground Coriander

Toss everything but the hard cheese and coriander with the dressing. Then put in presentation bowl and top with grated cheese and coriander. 

Site assembled brick oven

Wouldn't camping with a thousand of your closest friends be more fun with an on-site assembled oven? Of course it would, as I found out last weekend.

The design is based off directions for a backyard pizza oven found on You Tube, with added angle iron structure for more stability. Wonderboard is placed on saw horses for the base. Then one layer of 12 fire bricks make up the bed of the oven. Then courses of ordinary red clay bricks, not cement brick , are built up with angle irons to hold everything in place.

Courses across the top are supported by angle irons. Extra pieces of wonderboard serve as wind screens, a top, and a door.

Apple Bacon German Pancake

Another take on one of my favorite breakfast foods, the german pancake, but this time with bacon!

Hazelnut Almond Cookies

I had rather a lot of egg whites to turn into almond cookies. Rather more in fact than I had almond meal on hand in the fridge. So I experimented with replacing 1/3 of the almond meal with hazelnut meal. I like the look and texture that resulted. Gave the cookies a little more depth.

For 3 egg whites, use 1 1/3 cups almond meal 2/3 cup hazelnut meal, 1/3 cup sugar, 1 tsp vanilla, and a pinch of salt.

Preheat oven to 300 degrees -- low and slow.

Whip the egg whites with a little cream of tartar to stiff peaks. Whip in sugar and vanilla. Fold in nut meals.

Scoop batter onto lined baking sheets. I like to use an scoop. You could spoon them on for a more irregular surface.

Bake at 300 degrees until set and just starting to brown. About 30 minutes, but times vary.

I have noticed a lot of variation from batch to batch depending on the ratios of eggs to meal to sugar. You can get something more like a meringue or more like a cookie.

Gluten free Caramel Apple German Pancake

I got a suggestion from Stacy that the Thick German Pancake might work well in a gluten free form. Coming on the heels of the Caramel sauce experiment, I decided to do a double experiment: Gluten free Caramel Apple German Pancake.

Gluten Free Pumpkin Pie from Scratch

Well, not really pumpkin. In this case I made a butternut squash pie -- it just doesn't sound right. I wanted to make it gluten free (and I didn't feel like making my usual crust which is a lot more work). I also needed to make a substitution: I had no evaporated milk in the house.

Persimmon Apple Crisp

I adapted a recipe from Chow for apple crisp to make a persimmon apple crisp that went over very well at a little gathering we had yesterday. I wanted to make this both gluten free and tree-nut free, so I went with oat flour rather than wheat flour in the topping.

Black Sauce Experiments

We made some Black Sauce in a medieval food class I took this weekend. I used it up last night.

So I made some more this evening to have with some meat and cheese. This batch I made with almond meal, red wine vinegar, my pepper spice blend, ginger, and galangal.

I want to do some experiments to determine My Favorite Black Sauce mix

• bread crumbs | almond meal | hazlenut meal
• Toasted | untoasted
• round pepper | long pepper | tail pepper | grains of paradise | a blend
• red wine vinegar | white wine vinegar | cider vinegar | balsamic | verjus
• ginger | galangal | both
• whole thing cooked | fresh 

I don't think I will try all 900 combinations. 

I suppose I'll do two passes of varying individual variables and just keep my best choices to date. 

I still need to decide which order to test the variables. 

...

Update (7/21/2013):

I tried making black sauce at a recent camping event using gluten free bread crumbs and did not like the result. Eulalia speculated that in the process of toasting the GF bread crumbs the xanthan gum  became bitter. 

Zucchata Frittini

The Master Gardeners had zucchini themed snacks at a recent tour of Zenger Farms and I decided to make a zucchini frittata. I followed my basic formula for a greens frittata but without the leafy greens. I also though they would make better finger food if I made them in a rectangular pyrex pan rather than the round pie pan I usually use. I liked how that worked out.

Almond Cookies Gluten Free

In the interest of experimenting with Gluten Free baking, for my GF friends, I hunted for an almond cookie recipe. This is the one I came up with for today's experiment from http://www.gluten-free-around-the-world.com:

I thought they turned out pretty nice. A little chewy, a little nutty.