This recipe goes along with this Tuesday’s Tip for the perfect burger. (Next Tuesday’s Tip will be more grilling tips. Have to keep a good theme going!) Many professional chefs and home cooks agree that Worcestershire sauce is key to a great burger. This is because Worcestershire sauce is effectively an ancient fish sauce (it contains fermented anchovies), so it adds a sort of interesting depth of flavor or that perfect umami that enhances the basic burger to a true classic burger.

Good food is very often, even most often, simple food.

– Anthony Bourdain.

Photo courtesy of griffithimaging.com

I want to give you a heads-up; next week I’ll be posting all about the wedding I helped with over Mother’s Day weekend. It’s been nearly 4 weeks since I last mentioned it in THIS post. That is because I was so much “at the moment” and honestly too busy, to take photos of the food or the gorgeous setting and set-up. That’s a good thing in the scheme of it all, but not a good thing when you need photos to blog about!

Thankfully, the wonderful wedding photographer, Jen Griffith of Griffith Imaging, sent me photos to share. So please come back on Monday to see all the beauty that was Cody and Chanté Howard’s wedding weekend.

Today, I want to share a great cooking tip that I thought most people knew about, but realized I might be wrong in that thinking when I found out my own kids didn’t know it … and they used to live with me.

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It was only a month ago that I held a contest for my 8th Blogiversary and here I am – at it again!

This time, it is Barbara Fenzl, owner of Les Gourmettes, who is graciously and generously donating the fabulous prize. I’ll get to the details about the prize and how easy it is for you to have a chance to win it in just a moment.

This is the current issue of Edible PHOENIX. The publisher and editor, Pamela Hamilton along with featured contributor, Sharon Salomon, Barb Fenzl, and I are all members of Les Dames d’Escoffier International.

Every now and then, Sharon will ask me for quotes or thoughts about an upcoming article she is working on. This was the case for her most recent article titled, “Step Away From the Recipe! Try Your Hand at Intuitive Cooking”

Thank you Sharon for featuring me in your excellent article!

This clever segue leads us to the contest and the prize. Barb is offering one FREE seat in an upcoming cooking class with Chef Danielle Leoni.  Coincidentally, Danielle became one of our newest Les Dames members this past Monday night. This prize will most certainly hone your cooking skills and aid you on your way to more intuitive cooking.

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Two of the three instructors who taught cooking classes at Les Gourmettes Cooking School this April have made refreshing and colorful citrus salads. And why not? We all love to use local ingredients and Arizona offers some of the best citruses around.

Another coincidence was that both of the chefs used a variety of orange called Cara Cara. I don’t recall this variety ever being used at the school before and then suddenly two consecutive teachers use them. Amazingly, they are even available at Costco.

The Cara Cara orange is an all-natural hybrid orange, the result of the cross-pollination of a Washington Navel Orange and a Brazilian Bahia Navel Orange.

They were discovered in 1976 in Venezuela at the Hacienda da Cara Cara. The oranges found their way into very limited US markets in the 1980s.

The next citrus tree I plant is going to be a Cara Cara! I love the sweetness of the fruit and the gorgeous reddish-pink color of the flesh. The photo above shows the blood orange, the Cara Cara and the navel next to each other. Beautiful!

I enjoyed and was inspired so much by the cooking class salads that I decided to pick up a bag of Cara Cara oranges at Costco and use my backyard bounty of lemons, grapefruit, blood and navel oranges for my dad’s birthday dinner.

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day. Faith and Begorrah!

I’ve mentioned several times before that I am a founding member of the Phoenix chapter of Les Dames d’ Escoffier. Our March meeting was an appetizer potluck and I made these fun and savory pimento cheese lollypops to share.

No matter how cute and tasty they may have been, they could never compete with the out-of-this-world Fried Chicken that Charleen Badman, chef/owner, of the ever wonderful FnB, brought to the meeting! So darn good! But since I don’t have the recipe for Charleen’s chicken, the recipe for the lollypops will have to suffice.

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One of my favorite recipes on this site is courtesy of Chef Robert McGrath. Robert’s Green Chile Macaroni is the most delicious mac and cheese I’ve ever had.

With the hustle and bustle of Christmas, car issues, computer issues, and life in general, the very last thing I want to do is cook dinner. After picking my car up from the shop yesterday, during rush hour, the only option to get back into traffic was to make a detour past Costco. I decided to go in and brave the insanity since I needed a couple of last-minute gift cards anyway.

I decided to pick up a package of the prepared macaroni and cheese. In general, I like Costco’s prepared food, but the mac and cheese aren’t all that special. The only reason I chose it was because I knew I had two poblano peppers and a partial bag of frozen corn at home.

From the moment it hit my cart and all the way home, all I could think about was jazzing up this prepackaged mac and cheese.

It was delicious! Not as delicious as Robert’s version, but pretty darn fabulous for a cheat!

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Tomorrow is the drawing for the Free Cooking Classes, so be sure to get your comments in today!

In the meantime, I have some delicious photos from Sunday’s Les Dames d’Escoffier “Afternoon at the Farm: Cultivating Culinarians” fundraising event to share with you.

Hopefully, you’ve eaten before you see this because if not, it will have you drooling and running for the refrigerator!

Some of the photos are mine, some are lifted from Facebook and all the food photos from the sit-down portion of the afternoon were taken by Chef Stacey Schulz-McDevitt, who flew in from NYC to cook at the event. Thank you Stacey for allowing me to share them here!

I’ll put up the photos of the dishes in the order they are listed on the menu below. I’ll post portions of the menu as we go to help you keep track and identify the dishes and the talented women who made them.

Be ready to be amazed! Here we go…

Those were just the hor d’oeuvres … and the salsa station, above, wasn’t even listed on the menu. Each of the stations was accompanied by a different margarita and all the food for this portion of the afternoon was cooked and served by the students of C-CAP Arizona.

Now time for the sit-down, family-style lunch which was cooked on-site by some of the most talented and generous female chefs in Arizona.

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At the beginning of June, Kim, Barb and I took a field trip to the new AZ International Marketplace on the corner of Dobson and Broadway Roads in Mesa.

I meant to blog about it back then, but then … I didn’t. When I was making room in my freezer to freeze the rosé wine for the Frozé cocktail, I came across a package of flap steak (also known as Bavette steak) that I bought at the Marketplace. No better time than the present to cook up the beef and blog about the store.

When I go shopping to check out a new place, mainly when it’s far out of my neighborhood, I call it a Field Trip. This was an especially good one! There were plenty of the things you would expect to find. Such as shelves upon shelves of dried mushrooms.

Aisles upon aisles of noodles, rice sticks, rice paper, and the like.

And of course, many interesting finds – “Hello Kitty” seaweed anyone? (Oh, and we’ll be talking about that popcorn later, believe me!!!)

There were sweets of every variety, plus corn starch in lovely old-fashion boxes and even cooler-looking boxes of psyllium husk. Love the packaging on that, even though I had no clue what it was used for. Turns out it’s a laxative. Well then, there you go!

The produce department was the most fun!

So many exotic and tropical items to tempt you.

Kim and I were extra excited about the jackfruit. Some of them are triple the size of your head! No joke! What to do with all that jackfruit? I have no idea. Before I go back, I’m going to figure it out and buy one. For sure.

Not to worry, I still filled up my cart. Here is what I brought home on this first trip.

A wide range of coconut waters and kinds of milk. Some are roasted, others have pulp, and all were delish.

A can of sweetened condensed milk with a pretty label, fish sauce in a smaller bottle than you’ll usually find, and three interesting drinks; Korean ginseng drink with root, royal milk tea, and macadamia nut iced coffee. Thus far, I’ve only tried the milk tea. It was good and how cute is that blue can?!?

Cool triangular-shaped rice paper, Chinese honey in a sweet little glass, chrysanthemum drink, super cheap thin white candles, candied ginger, and three pretty little boxes of ginger candies. I haven’t tried the chrysanthemum drink yet, I haven’t been brave enough. The candies are good though. 😉

Two flavors of sardines (for my dad) a lovely can of Café du Monte coffee, a large tin of Madras curry powder, Korean BBQ sauce, green and red curry paste, and sweet chili sauce. One can never have too much sweet chili sauce!

An inexpensive jar of tahini, garlic hoisin sauce, extra-thick noodles, and panko.

Next up: A cheap hat for yard work and the pool, a cool “ice stick” ice tray (which I used along with the candied ginger for THESE Peach Mules), and the very best thing that I bought – SRIRACHA POPCORN!  It is amazing! I can’t wait to go back and buy a case of it! Seriously addicting! A case may not be enough! I may go out there this week since now I can’t stop thinking about the popcorn!!! Does anyone want to take a field trip with me?

Finally, the last tray displayed my purchases; frozen dumplings and pork buns. These were nothing special, I’ve found similar items at Trader Joe’s and they were about the same. And the flap steak.

Here is a great recipe for flap steak. I did not create it, it comes from one of my all-time favorite chefs and cooking teachers, John Ash.

Chef John Ash’s Grilled Flap Steak

• 2 tablespoons green curry paste
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce, or more to taste
• 2 tablespoons rice vinegar, or more to taste
• 2 tablespoons coconut milk
• Freshly ground black pepper to taste
• Pinch ground cayenne pepper
• Pinch salt
• 2 pounds flap steak, trimmed of fat

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One of my favorite Valley chefs, Kevin Binkley, was the teacher at Les Gourmettes this week. I’ve mentioned Kevin and his stellar restaurant, Binkley’s, many times before on this site.

Photo

Kevin was able to do something that no one else has done, make me a kale salad lover – as long as it’s this salad! I could eat it every single day for lunch and dinner and be a happy camper.

Kevin calls it a crushed kale salad. It is the same technique you’ll find all over the internet, only they are calling it massaging the kale instead of crushing it. One thing he does differently is to tear the kale into bite-sized pieces instead of cutting it into ribbons or chiffonade.

In this video, I’m holding the camera with my left hand and only using my right to massage the kale. You’ll use both hands.

So why crush or massage the kale? Because doing so helps break down the very strong cell structure of the leaves. After a couple of minutes, you’ll notice a visible difference as you massage the kale; the leaves darken, they shrink and wilt and become quite silky, and most importantly, palatable. Raw kale is bitter and tough, massaging or crushing is key to enjoying it uncooked.

One big takeaway for me from the class was the way Kevin toasts nuts. Instead of spreading them on a dry baking sheet, like I usually do, he tosses the nuts in a little oil and salt. If you’ve ever toasted nuts before, you know that when they are done, they are dry. So dry that salt, sugar, or spice won’t stick to them. Tossing them in the oil and seasoning before toasting is so much better!

Two points I need to make: You’ll notice the recipe calls for raspberries, I didn’t have any, but they are a beautiful, colorful, and yummy addition to the salad. Also, be sure to buy bunches of kale, not the bagged chopped-up variety. The bagged stuff has the center ribs included, you don’t want the ribs. I used one bunch of dinosaur or black kale and one bunch of curly kale. A mix is a nice way to go.

Oh, and if you’re interested in learning more about Kevin Binkley – enjoy this great documentary.

Binkley’s Crushed Kale Salad

Toasted Walnuts

• 1 cup raw walnut halves
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Balsamic Vinaigrette

• 3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon sugar
• Egg yolk from 1 small egg (or 1/2 yolk from a large egg)
• 1 tablespoon peeled and diced shallot
• 1/4 cup olive oil

Salad

• 2 bunches kale (a mix of dinosaur, curly, and/or red)
• 1 ½ cups finely shredded Parmesan, divided
• Salt and freshly ground pepper
• 3 navel oranges
• 1 container raspberries

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This soup is a lifesaver. It has single-handily helped ease the pain from my head cold!

The recipe comes from Barbara Fenzl’s Les Gourmettes cooking class. I enjoyed it after the class on Wednesday night and then again for breakfast yesterday morning. I also brought home some leftover asparagus, so I chopped that up and added it to the soup. Soup may not be your typical breakfast, but it works for me!

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