ChezCindy: Classic Iceberg Wedge Salad

 

Iceberg lettuce may have fallen out of favor with so many lettuces taking top marketing for nutritional value and taste.  But none of the kale, spinach or arugula mixes can stand in for the classic wedge salad.  Only iceberg can take center stage for this steakhouse favorite.  

This salad is simple and quick to put together, great to serve on a hot summer day.  The lettuce is crisp, juicy and deliciously chilled, served with just a few ingredients.  Key to success is a creamy dressing drizzled in abundance.  Optional additions are cherry tomatoes, bacon, and chopped fresh herbs.  Most are served with blue cheese, but feta could stand in as a substitute if blue cheese is not preferred or skip the cheese altogether.  

As far as nutrition goes, iceberg lettuce can hang in with the other lettuces.  It is loaded with vitamins K and A and has high water content to keep us hydrated on these hot summer days.  Dig in and enjoy!

Classic Iceberg Wedge Salad

1 head of iceberg lettuce

1 cup cherry tomatoes, each sliced in half

2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives

4 tablespoons crumbled blue cheese

flakey sea salt for serving

Creamy Salad Dressing 

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon honey

1 teaspoon kosher salt

pinch of fresh ground pepper

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

6 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons mayonnaise

2 tablespoons plain full fat yogurt

In a small bowl, add the Dijon mustard, honey, salt and pepper; whisk to combine.  Add the vinegar; whisk to combine.  Slowly drizzle in the oil, whisking vigorously while doing so.  Whisk in the mayonnaise and yogurt. 

Putting it all together:  Make the dressing, then keep chilled until ready to serve the salad.  

Using a large knife, cut the head of iceberg lettuce into 4 equal wedges, cutting through the core.  Place each wedge onto a large dinner plate.  Drizzle 2-3 tablespoons of dressing over each wedge.  Scatter a generous portion of halved cherry tomatoes, a sprinkling of chopped chives, 1 tablespoon of blue cheese, and a shower of flaked sea salt over each wedge.  Serve chilled within 30 minutes of dressing the salad.  

ChezCindy: OMG Giant Peach Muffins

 

These giant peach muffins were inspired by the abundance of peaches I had from my annual peach picking with my BFF.  Each year we head out for our adventure to pick peaches.  The peaches are always gorgeous, and I come home with a full peck, which is a lot of peaches.  Peaches don't hold for a long time like apples.  They ripen quickly and need to be eaten, used for baking and cooking, or frozen within a short time period.  I've been baking, and sharing, many of my favorite recipes, like peach bars and this new recipe for peach muffins.

This recipe for Giant Peach Muffins was inspired by a new cookbook by Jessie Sheehan, Snackable Bakes.  Ms. Sheehan's book is full of fabulous recipes that come together quickly with limited equipment, usually just a large bowl, whisk and rubber spatula, and go from idea to eating in short time.  I like that!  Not always do I want a baking project that takes a full day or multiple days.  Simple.  

The original recipe called for cherries, another favorite fruit, but I really needed to use the peaches.  The recipes in this book offer suggestions for swap-out variations.  It seemed logical if I could swap out cherries for raspberries or strawberries, I could do the same with peaches.  Lucky for me, it worked beautifully.  

A few notes about the recipe.  By itself without fruit the recipe is delicious.  Full of vanilla, deeply golden brown and a great texture.  If you choose to use fruit, use a soft fruit like peaches, raspberries, or cherries, measuring to 2 cups of chopped fruit.  A firm fruit such as apples might not cook fully.  The recipe calls for 2 tablespoons of vanilla extract.  That is not an error as you might think teaspoons is meant.  The vanilla is delicious in the muffins and your house will smell wonderful as the muffins are baking.  If you don't have turbinado sugar in your pantry, it is a good addition to have on hand.  You will use it often to add a sprinkle of shine and crispy tops to many pies, cookies and muffins.  I highly recommend it.  The recipe calls for starting the bake at a high temperature, 400 degrees.  This will yield a high puff and a quick brown of the muffin.  The temperature is reduced 15 minutes into the baking time to 350 degrees.  Make note of this reduction otherwise the muffins will be over baked.  Below is my adaptation of Ms. Sheehan's muffin recipe.  

Giant Peach Muffins

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 1/4 cups granulated sugar

2 tablespoons vanilla extract

2 large eggs

2/3 cups full-fat yogurt or sour cream

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon kosher salt

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 cups chopped peaches, raspberries or cherries

Turbinado sugar for sprinkling 

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Grease the wells of a large 6-well muffin tin (not standard size) with cooking spray oil to coat thoroughly.  Set aside.

Working with a large mixing bowl, add in the oil, sugar and vanilla whisking to combine for 30 seconds.  Whisk in the eggs, one at a time, then add in the yogurt whisking to combine.  One at a time, whisk in the baking powder, baking soda, and kosher salt whisking well after each addition.

Fold in the flour and the peaches, (or other fruit if using) using a rubber spatula just until combined, not over mixing.  Divide the batter among the prepared muffin wells.  The 6 wells will be very full.  You may have batter leftover.  Sprinkle 1 teaspoon of turbinado sugar over the top of each muffin.

Place the muffin tin into the preheated oven at 400 degrees, baking at this temperature for 15 minutes.  Reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees, baking for an additional 20-25 minutes until deeply brown and a toothpick inserted into the center of the muffin comes out clean with just a few crumbs. A total of 35-40 minutes baking time.  

Remove from the oven, allowing the muffins to cool in the pan for about 10 minutes.  Using a butter knife gently loosen the muffins from the tin, transferring to a wire rack to cool.  Keep the muffins on the counter until they are gone, up to 2 days.  

ChezCindy: Grilled Steak with Farm Tomatoes & Feta

 

This simple dish of grilled steak and tomatoes has been in my cooking rotation for many years.  Sometimes I forget to make our favorites as it had been years since I made this for dinner.  Last night was perfect timing as I had lots of gorgeous tomatoes from the farmer's market.  

The recipe is simple.  Basically, grill a strip steak as you prefer, medium rare for us.  The key to success is to have really good tomatoes from a farm stand, perfectly ripe and ready for use.  Make a vinaigrette and you are done.  I like to serve a few center-cut slices of the steak, pile on a good amount of tomatoes, drizzle all with vinaigrette and a sprinkle of crumbled feta.  A fabulous summer meal.  

Grilled Steak with Farm Tomatoes and Feta

2 strip steaks, 10-12 ounces for each steak

4-5 large heirloom tomatoes, any variety and color

Shallot vinaigrette

Feta cheese

Fresh basil for garnish

Serves 4

Light a grill or prepare an indoor grill pan as preferred.  Season the steaks with salt and pepper.  Grill to your preference in temperature.  Remove from the grill transferring to a plate to rest for 5 minutes.  

While the steaks are grilling, make the shallot vinaigrette and prepare the tomatoes.  

1 tablespoon finely chopped shallots

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon honey

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/8 teaspoon cracked black pepper

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

6 tablespoons olive oil

To make the vinaigrette:  Place the chopped shallots, Dijon mustard, honey, salt & pepper in a small bowl.  Whisk to combine.  Add the vinegar; whisk to combine.  Allow this mixture to marinate for 5 minutes.  This will mellow the flavor of the shallots.  Slowly drizzle in the oil, whisking vigorously while doing so.

Cut the tomatoes into 1-inch pieces.  Place the tomatoes into a separate medium size bowl.  Add 3-4 tablespoons of vinaigrette to the tomatoes, tossing gently to combine.  

Putting it all together:  After the steak has rested, cutting crosswise, cut each steak into 1/2-inch slices.  Place 3-4 slices in the center of each plate.  Place a heaping mound of the dressed tomatoes above the sliced steak.  Drizzle a tablespoon of dressing over the steak slices, crumble the feta over the steak and tomatoes. Garnish with fresh basil leaves.  

ChezCindy: Blondies - An American Cookie

 

Blondies are a bar cookie quite often compared to brownies but without chocolate.  I had never baked or even considered baking a blondie until recent years.  I was fortunate enough to be in vicinity of being able to purchase cookie boxes from Joy Cho Pastries.  Joy presented a sampling of various cookies in her boxes, all with her unique application of ingredients to traditional cookies.  Occasionally the boxes included blondies.  The blondies became my coveted favorite that I would declare as mine, not sharing with anyone else.  Sounds kind of harsh, but my husband prefers chocolate cookies, so it worked out well.  Joy is back in NYC doing fabulous baking and I am left on my own to bake blondies.  

First, I had to do some research to find a base recipe.  It turns out blondie recipes can be somewhat controversial among bakers.  I have learned that the first blondie recipe came into publication in the1890's using molasses as the sweetener, lending a dark color to the cookie bar.  Blondies were quickly upstaged by Brownies using a similar recipe with the addition of chocolate and using white sugar in place of molasses.  Blondies fell out of favor until the late 1980s when New York City bakeries and delis started selling the homemade cookie bars as packaged sweet treats.  Recipe development took off from there, with a more modern spin on the traditional recipe by adding leavening (baking powder and baking soda), increasing the amount of butter used, switching from molasses to brown sugar, and adding decadent ingredients like chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, toasted nuts and more.  

The first recipe I tried was from one of my mother's old cookbooks.  It was truly awful, very bland and flat.  I am using them as dog treats.  Much research later, I have found my base recipe for Blondies.  This recipe is a blend of modern and traditional, with the use of leavening, and the only add-in is toasted walnuts.  My vision is to use this base recipe with various changes such as adding spices like cinnamon or cardamom.  I most certainly will add chocolate chips at some point, and maybe adding dried cherries or cranberries.  

Chewy Blondies with Toasted Walnuts

2 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

2 sticks (8-ounces) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 1/2 cups light brown sugar, packed

1/2 cup sugar

2 large eggs, room temperature

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups toasted walnuts, chopped

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees with the rack placed in the center of the oven.  Butter and lightly flour a 9"x13" baking pan.  Set aside.

In a medium size bowl, add in the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt, stirring to combine.  Set aside.

Working with a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, add the butter to the bowl, mixing for 3-4 minutes until creamy.  Add in both sugars, creaming together for 2-3 minutes.  Add in the eggs, one at a time, mixing for 1 minute before adding the second egg and the vanilla, mixing again for 1 minute.  Turn off the mixer to add in the dry ingredients, with the mixer set to low speed, mix until just combined.  Add in the toasted walnuts, using a rubber spatula to be sure they are evenly distributed within the batter. 

Transfer the batter to the prepared baking pan.  The batter is somewhat thick and will take some effort to distribute evenly.  Bake in the preheated oven for 35-38 minutes.  The blondies will slightly pull away from the sides of the pan and the top will be lightly browned.  Cool the blondies in the pan for 10 minutes.  Place a cooling rack on top of the pan to flip out the blondies from the pan.  Place a large cutting board on top of the blondies to flip over again so that the blondies are now right side up.  

The blondies can be cut while still slightly warm or can be cut when they are cooled to room temperature.  Store the cut blondies in an air-tight container or freeze for later use.  

ChezCindy: Zucchini Banana Bread

 

          

This mash-up of zucchini and banana came by way of using what I had available.  I had one sad looking banana and 1 zucchini, each in the condition of use it or throw it out.  I decided to make zucchini banana bread.  Something I have never thought to do.  If I did an internet search, most likely I would find that such a recipe exists.  However, I simply decided to use my tried-and-true zucchini bread recipe I have used since I was very young.  I'm not sure when I hand-wrote out the recipe card, but it is still my go-to for zucchini bread.  

I had more zucchini than banana, so the bread is more of a standard zucchini bread, with just a bit of banana as a background flavor.  From the recipe card, you can see the original measure of zucchini is 2 cups.  I swapped out 1/2 cup for banana in this new recipe.  Both resulting breads are wonderful.  I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed the addition of banana.  Use what you have to equal a 2-cup measure.   

Zucchini Banana Bread

3 large eggs

1 cup vegetable oil

2 cups sugar

1 1/2 cups grated zucchini

1/2 cup mashed banana 

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 teaspoons cinnamon

Makes 2 loaves 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Prepare 2 loaf pans, 8"x4" in size, by lightly spraying each with baking oil spray.  Set aside.

To make this recipe, use an electric stand mixer or a hand mixer.  I used a fork and a spatula.   

Working with a large size mixing bowl, add the eggs and the oil to the bowl, mixing to combine thoroughly.  Add in the sugar, grated zucchini, mashed banana and vanilla, mixing to combine.  In a separate medium size bowl, add the flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and cinnamon, whisking to combine.  Transfer the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients.  Folding together until just combined.  

Transfer the batter to the prepared loaf pans.  Place the pans into the preheated oven, baking for 55-60 minutes until golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center of the bread comes out clean.  Remove from the oven, cooling in the pans for 10 minutes.  Remove the bread from the pans to cool on a rack. 

ChezCindy: Carrot-top Parsley Pesto with Parmesan - GF

 

It was not new to my awareness that carrot-top leaves are edible.  I don't think I had even eaten them in a restaurant or certainly had not used the leaves in my own cooking.  Their gorgeous green color and feathery fern-like leaves are attractive to the eye but sadly discarded.  I was at the farmer's market and kept seeing carrots greens peeking out of the tops of other customer's market bags.  This brought inspiration that I should make something with carrot leaves.  Carrot-top pesto came to mind and what an awakening that was.   

Pesto most commonly is thought of as being made with basil leaves.  Actually, the word pesto means to pound as traditionally made with a mortar and pestle.  Of course, we now have the convenience of using a food processor.   Pesto can be made from many types of herbs and leaves such as kale and spinach pesto, garlic scape pesto, and even sundried tomato basil pesto.  

In this recipe I use carrot leaves and parsley leaves which pair together very well.  I encourage you to taste the carrot leaves on their own in comparison to the parsley leaves.  Both are bitter, with the parsley leaves having a stronger punch than the carrot leaves.  Using them together in a standard recipe in place of basil results in a delicious flavorful pesto.  Also not surprising is the nutritional value of carrot-top leaves.  They are off-the-chart in vitamin A just like the carrots themselves, and high in potassium. 

Other uses for carrot-top leaves are to sauté carrots slices in olive oil adding chopped carrot leaves at the end of the cooking time finishing with a sprinkling of kosher salt or adding chopped carrot leaves to homemade soup as you would parsley leaves.  

 

Carrot-top Parsley Pesto with Parmesan

1 cup carrot-top leaves from 1 bunch of carrots, well cleaned and dried

1/2 cup parsley leaves

1 garlic clove

1/4 cup roasted cashews, unsalted or lightly salted

1/2 cup olive oil

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 cup fresh grated Parmesan cheese

Working with a food processor, add the carrot leaves and the parsley leaves, along with the clove of garlic to the processor bowl.  Pulse the contents until coarsely ground.  Add in the cashews, pulsing until mostly combined.  Add in half of the olive oil, pulsing to begin to make a sauce.  Add in the remaining oil and the salt, processing until blended.  Add in the Parmesan cheese, pulsing until just combined, not over-processing. 

Serve with pasta or drizzled over crostini toasts.  Also, delicious folded into scramble eggs or an omelet.  

Summer Vegetable Tart with Carrot-top Pesto  

Make this tart using the recipe link above, substituting the carrot-top parsley pesto for the basil pesto.  

ChezCindy: French Potato Salad with Broccoli

 

French potato salads are made with a mustard vinaigrette and lots of fresh herbs to dress waxy new potatoes.  Most American potato salads are made with a mayonnaise base as the dressing.  Both are delicious.  The French potato salad is best served at room temperature, making it perfect for an outdoor picnic gathering with no worries of the mayonnaise getting too warm for safe serving temperature. 

 In this recipe, I have taken a twist on tradition by adding steamed broccoli.  If broccoli is not for you but like the idea of adding a vegetable, steamed green beans would be more traditional.  

For a quick and easy method to steam the added vegetables, click here to learn that process. 

I used my standard Chez Cindy vinaigrette recipe using white wine vinegar and olive oil, with Dijon mustard and honey.   

 

French Potato Salad with Broccoli

1 pound bite-size red-skin and new potatoes

3 cups broccoli florets, steamed

1 small shallot, minced

3 tablespoons fresh herbs (tarragon, parsley, chives)

1 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

5 tablespoons Chez Cindy vinaigrette

Scrub the potatoes well, leaving the skins on.  Place the whole potatoes into a saucepan, filling the pan with cold water to cover the potatoes by 1/2-inch.  Bring the water to a boil, reduce the heat cooking the potatoes until they are just tender when pierced with the tip of a knife.  Drain and allow to cool.  

Steam the broccoli, cool to room temperature.  Tear the florets into small bite-size pieces.  Mince the shallot.  Tear or rough chop the fresh herbs.  Make the vinaigrette.  

Putting it all together:  Place the cooked potatoes and the broccoli into a medium size bowl.  Add in the minced shallot, fresh herbs, and salt, gently tossing all together.  Pour the vinaigrette over the mixture, tossing gently to coat the potatoes, broccoli and herbs.  The potato salad can be served immediately or kept at room temperature for use within 1-2 hours. 

Recipe can be doubled if desired.