Devine Eats

I cannot believe that in over two years of posting on this blog I have never posted about this chicken club salad. I'm embarrassed.  Even more so because it's now showing  up in this hastily photographed state.  I had to snap this with my phone before I even finished mixing it all together because I knew the second that it was ready, it would disappear in the blink of an eye.  My apologies for a messy bowl and unevenly distributed dressing.

Chicken club salad is the food of gods. This is not an exaggeration. Right up there with the perfection of a summertime BLT or this lovely dish of Vietnamese noodles, stir fried beef and veggies, this salad has been a favorite from first bite. I've made it for friends and roommates who have in turn made it for their friends or special someones and every last one of those people has proclaimed this "salad" as devine perfection. I can give you references if you don't believe me, or you can just go and make it yourself. Like, right now.

You might think, after taking a quick glance at the ingredient list, that this is merely a salad or panzanella form of a BLT, but in fact it's a whole different beast.  Sure, it has brightly acidic tomatoes, and bacon, and mayonaise and toasted bread but then that mayonaise gets transformed when it's blended with basil and yogurt and lemon juice.  And there are cubes of gently poached chicken and thin rings or green onion dotted throughout.  This is nothing like that classic sandwich.  I'll repeat: this is the food of the gods.

A recent search for the original recipe lead me to a Food Network page saying the contents I was searching for could no longer be found.  Which would really be a shame, except I have here my version, one I've tweaked over the years and I think is even better.  There are more croutons for more crunch!  I use half mayonaise (Best Foods only, please!) and half plain yogurt for the basil dressing and then slather the whole thing over the salad instead of a measly 1/2 cup.  And the bread, use whatever your heart desires as long as it has some structure to it.  One time I used an Italian loaf with lemon zest in it and it was heavenly.

You're welcome.  I single handedly just saved the internet.

Chicken Club Salad
adapted from Sara Moulton

There are several elements to assemble here: poach the chicken, make the croutons, blend up the dressing, fry the bacon and cut up the veggies, but all of this can be done in advance if need be. Store the croutons in an air tight container, the veggies, dressing and chicken separately in the fridge but the bacon is probably best freshly crisped up. About 10 minutes before serving toss everything together in a big bowl and you're good to go.

6 to 8 servings

6 cups of 3/4-inch cubes day old country loaf
3 tablespoons olive oil
6 slices bacon, chopped
3 pounds whole chicken breasts OR 1½ pounds boneless/skinless breast, poached and the meat cut into bite-size pieces
1 pint cherry tomatoes, quartered
4 scallions including the green part, sliced thinly
Quick Basil Mayonnaise, recipe follows
Salt and pepper

Quick Basil Mayonnaise:
2 cups loosely packed fresh basil leaves
½ cup mayonnaise

½ cup plain yogurt 

4 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
salt and pepper

In a food processor or blender blend together the basil, mayonnaise, yogurt and lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper.  Refrigerate until ready to use.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a bowl drizzle the bread cubes with the olive oil, tossing them to coat evenly, and season generously with salt and pepper. Spread the bread cubes in a jelly-roll pan (or cookie sheet) and toast them in the middle of the preheated oven for 10 to 15 minutes, until they are golden.  Let them cool. 

In a skillet cook the bacon over moderate heat, stirring, until it is crisp and transfer it with a slotted spoon to paper towels to drain. 

In a large bowl combine the chicken, tomatoes, scallions, bacon, quick basil mayonnaise, and salt and pepper to taste. Just before serving, mix in croutons and let sit 5-10 minutes.

Of Summertime Spritzers

This past week has been a "please, get this girl a cocktail" kind of a week.  

A Sunday afternoon, people watching in the park and soaking in the warm sunshine totally calls for a cocktail.  Or at least a beer or some wine.

Stressing myself out planning my Fall semester and realizing that my free time, my precious commitment-free, care-free, free time is about to come to a screeching halt?  Please, get this girl a cocktail, hopefully it will take the edge off.

A gathering of good friends, reunited after what feels like way too long?  Let's celebrate and drink a cocktail!

Realizing that I only have about 10 more days of summer break left?  You know the drill.  Fetch that cocktail.

This particular cocktail was dreamed up on a whim as I stood in my kitchen, refrigerator door open, trying to figure out the fate of the latest batch of foraged blackberries.  (They're still going strong, those urban blackberry bushes, and I still cannot resist the little hike and filling another tupperware full of sun warmed fruit.)  In the crisper draw just below them was a big bunch of basil and on the counter were a few lemons.  You know, when life gives you lemons and all that...

It's tart and fruity but neither overwhelmingly so.  The herbaceous licorice notes from the basil make it a bit more sophisticated, a grown up lemonade.  Fizzed up with a bit of club soda and poured over some ice and sparkling wine, this spritzer is just what my week, and weekend needs.

Blackberry-Basil Lemonade

This is just the lemonade portion of the aforementioned cocktail. I trust you guys can mix it up to your liking.  I've really been digging the spritzers lately so I mixed mine up with 2 parts sparkling wine to 1 1/2 parts lemonade and topped it off with a splash of club soda.  Refreshing, low alcohol, and perfect for afternoon sipping.  It's also totally delicious just on it's own.

yields 4 1/2 cups

juice of 3 lemons

1/4 cup sugar

10-12 basil leaves

1/2 cup fresh blackberries

4 cups water (or 3 cups water and 1 cup club soda)

In a blender add lemon juice, sugar, basil leaves, blackberries and 1 cup of water.  Blend for 1 minute, or until the sugar has dissolved.  Strain through a fine mesh sieve to remove the seeds and pieces of basil leaves.  Add remaining water to strained mixture and refrigerate until chilled.  If you're going the sparkling route, add the rest of the water, chill, then add the club soda just before serving.

...Take Me Away

I've never had much of the traveling itch.  I rarely feel the need to get away, somewhere far away, and  discover something new.  Experience life differently.  In the past I've been quite content with mini domestic explorations and weekend road trips.  I felt grounded and rooted and wholly connected to my time and place.  But then something changed.  Maybe it's all the fog and cool summer days or the realization that after a year of living in this city, it'll never be my city.  Maybe my jam packed busy schedule for the upcoming fall semester is factoring in too.  Either way, a little late to the game, I'm ready to pack a bag or two and fly off to far away lands.

But summer comes to a close in 2 weeks and my student loans for the year have yet to come through so here in the city I'll remain, traveling by way of cooking and daydreaming; planning for a next big adventure.  And all that is okay really, because that just means something exciting will be waiting just over the horizon.

There are bowls like this Vietnamese rice noodle and stir fried beef salad to transport me and tide me over.  A salad so perfectly summer, so perfectly balanced that I can hardly find fault with it.  A tangled   base of translucent noodles mounded so high with tender beef and colorful crisp vegetables that I didn't leave us enough room to mix in the nuoc cham dressing.  Bowls filled all the way to the tippy top with eyes much larger than our stomachs.

I love all the elements and flavors that Vietnamese cuisine is based on.  Fresh vegetables garnishing so many dishes, a medley of herbs that not only work in taste but make for wonderful aromatics as well.  Salty fish sauce and acidic lime juice, balanced with a little raw sugar and a spicy heat, perfection.  A little marinated and (in this case) tender beef boost the savory quotient and I'm one happy eater.

And someday, instead of just eating, I'll be the one sitting on the beaches of Southeast Asia, satisfying that itch.

Bun Bo Xao

adapted from Use Real Butter

This recipe is mostly prep work, but once that's all done, the actual noodle salads are a cinch to assemble.  Just pile the ingredients on top of the noodles, splash a little of the nuoc cham dressing and give it all a good toss.  Every ingredient plays a key roll in the overall flavor, so really, the prep work all becomes worth it.  You'll totally understand once you take your first bite.

4-6 servings

1 stem lemongrass (the tender white part), minced
1 lb. steak (I used ribeye), sliced thin against the grain and at an angle
2 cloves fresh garlic, minced
2 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon fish sauce

1 small white onion, sliced
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 package vermicelli noodles/rice sticks, cooked
2 cups bean sprouts
2 Persian cucumbers, halved and sliced
a handful of mint leaves

a handful of cilantro leaves
pickled daikon and carrots
chopped salted & roasted peanuts

nuoc cham (dressing):
juice from 2 limes
2 tablespoons brown sugar
3 tablespoons fish sauce

1/4 cup water
4 cloves garlic, minced
sambal olek paste to taste

Whisk together all the nuoc cham ingredients until sugar is dissolved. Set aside.

Follow the instructions on the rice noodle package. If there aren’t any, place the noodles in a large pot of boiling water and let boil for 5 minutes. Turn off the heat and cover the pot for 3 minutes. Drain the noodles and rinse in cold water.

To make the bun bo xao: Mix 2 teaspoons of the lemongrass (reserve the rest for later) with the beef, the garlic, and 2 tablespoons of fish sauce. Set it aside and let it marinade for 20 minutes. 

Gather your serving bowls and place a large handful of rice noodles in each bowl. Sprinkle a handful of bean sprouts and some cucumber slices over the noodles. Roll the herbs together and give them a good chopping. Sprinkle some over each bowl. Set aside. 

Heat a wok or frying pan on your highest heat setting. Add the vegetable oil, the rest of the lemongrass and the sliced onion. Stir the contents around the pan and toss the beef in, from here it should only take 2 or 3 minutes for the meat to cook through.  Add the remaining teaspoon of fish sauce and give everything in the pan a good stir. Place a scoop of the beef on each noodle salad. Dress with more herbs, Vietnamese pickled carrots and daikon, chopped peanuts and nuoc cham.

Grown-up Tastes

I'm sorry.  I've been holding out on you.  I should have given you this pizza recipe more than a week ago, but I've been selfishly clinging onto it and not sharing.  Let me assure you though, this is totally worth waiting for.

Like the chicken satay and the corn, zucchini and feta pizza before it, I have a thing for interesting and homemade pizzas.  I'm not much of a delivery girl (I don't think I've ever ordered and had a pizza delivered, come to think of it), or snag a cheap slice in the afternoon or after the bar kind of girl either.  Back in elementary school I did join Pizza Hut's Book It! reading club allowing me to pester my parents to take me to get my free personal pan pizza once I fulfilled the quota.  A program that I was quite enthusiastic about owing mostly to the fact that I already read books like crazy and getting Pizza Hut was a novelty.  We were a strictly Boboli household - with the occasional BBQ chicken thrown in from Pizza Nova.

These days I prefer to get my hands in there and make the whole thing myself.  Stretching and pulling the crust out thin, heating my oven to its absolute maximum temperature, arranging the toppings and not too much cheese - and please! hold the pizza sauce - to make my own perfect pies.  I will gladly trade the convenience of delivery for the extra time in my kitchen, no problem.

This roasted cauliflower pizza, topped with colorful chilies and green olive tapenade was heavenly.  The nutty cauliflower bits melted together with the mild fresh mozzarella, the Fresno and Anaheim chilies punching up the spice factor, the colors here alone are almost enough.  But then you dollop little spoonfuls of green olive tapenade all over just as you take it out of the oven, making briny little pools as it softens in the heat, and that's when you've truly reached perfection and balance.

Pizza with Roasted Cauliflower, Chiles & Green Olive Tapenade
Adapted from TasteFood

There are many shortcuts you can take with this pizza, and as long as you're buying good quality stuff, the final product will not suffer. I used Whole Foods multigrain pizza dough and really enjoyed it's flavor, although I couldn't get it as thin as I would have liked. You can also use a jarred green olive tapenade, or whip one up yourself with olives, olive oil, garlic, lemon zest, anchovies and a pinch of red pepper flakes.

4-6 servings

1 pound ball of pizza dough
olive oil
8 oz fresh mozzarella, shredded or torn into small chunks
2 cups chopped cauliflower florets from 1 small head
2 Fresno chiles, sliced into rings
1 Anaheim/California chile, sliced into rings
1/2 cup green olive tapenade

Preheat oven to 450F.  If you have a pizza stone, put it in while the oven is cold.

On a piece of parchment paper, roll out dough to desired thickness.  Sometimes it comes out a circle, sometime a rectangle.  Sometimes it's just a wonky shape, dosen't matter.  Just roll, toss, stretch that dough until it's the thickness you like (I personally prefer a thinner crust).

Brush dough with a bit of olive oil.  Scatter the shredded/torn mozzarella over the whole thing, leaving a 1/2 inch border along the edges.  In a bowl toss the chopped cauliflower and chile rings with about 1 tablespoon of olive oil and then scatter the whole mixture over the cheese.

Transfer the pizza on the parchment paper to the pizza stone (or just onto a cookie sheet and then into the oven), and bake for 15-20 minutes, until the cheese bubbles and the crust turns a nice golden brown.  As soon as you take it out of the oven, spoon little dollops of the green olive tapenade all over and let it sit for 5 minutes.  Slice and serve.

Summer Romance

It's funny how you fall in love with a season all over again, year after year.  Never has it been the case that I didn't love summer, (I'm a Leo after all, ruled by the sun) but somehow in the interceding months of the year, that little bit slips to the back of my brain and becomes more a faded memory than a sensory feeling.  But oh!  When the sun does come out, and the earth heats up and the air changes just so, it all comes rushing back.

We've been going to the farmer's market every Saturday morning for the past month, and you can see the signs of summer creeping in at every stall.  The bushes of little green berries in the park just up the hill from us have finally exploded into a mess of juicy, deep purple blackberries.  And if hope helps at all, these foggy mornings will more quickly turn into warm sunny days.

It's a new version of summer I'm adjusting to here in San Francisco, but it's still my favorite season.

This pan-seared salmon is part of that redefining.  Previously, it might have been a grilled version, with black markings from the grates and a subtle smokey flavor, but we no longer have a grill and most evenings are so thick with fog I'd hardly want to stand outside long enough for the fish to cook.  A nice and hot cast iron skillet followed by a brief trip into the oven is the new grill.  I love the textures this recipe results in.  The crisp bottom of the fish from a heavy skillet and high heat, the interior kept moist and tender from a slathering of mustard and finally the crumbly, herby topping.

I've been using an herbs de Provence spice blend in just about everything lately (so good on grilled vegetables with a little olive oil and balsamic!), so that's what I used here and I thought it went perfectly with the dijon mustard and salty kick of freshly grated parmesan.  Paired with lightly steamed tender green beans and the first of the season's tiny yellow tomatoes, it all felt very French countryside.

Mustard and Panko-Crusted Salmon


This dish is simple and perfect for just two. I used skin-on salmon fillets, which helped keep the salmon itself from sticking to the pan, but next time I think I'd prefer it without. The parts that did come into direct contact with the super hot pan and crisped up were my favorite bits. And in the spirit of summer, you could easily sub out the dried herb blend for a teaspoon of fresh thyme or tarragon, whatever sounds best to you.

2 servings

2 salmon fillets, about 6 oz. each
1 tablespoon dijon mustard
salt and pepper
1/3 cup panko crumbs
1/2 teaspoon herbs de provence
1 tablespoon freshly grated parmesan
1 tablespoon olive oil, plus more for pan

Preheat oven to 425F.

Pat salmon fillets dry, season with salt and pepper and set aside.

In a shallow bowl, or small plate, mix the panko crumbs, herbs de provence and parmesan cheese and season with a little more salt and pepper.  Drizzle 1 tablespoon olive oil over the whole thing and mix to distribute.  The panko crumbs should stick together slightly.

Heat enough olive oil to coat the bottom of a heavy, oven-proof skillet over medium high heat for 2 minutes, being careful not to let it smoke.

Divide the mustard between the 2 fillets and spread around to cover top.  Press the panko mixture into the mustard and on top of the salmon and then carefully transfer to preheated skillet.  Cook for 4 minutes to get the bottom crispy and then immediately transfer to the oven to finish cooking for 10-13 minutes more, depending on the thickness of your fillets.