Whole Wheat Focaccia with Olives, Cheese, and Rosemary

This bread actually started out as an idea for a sandwich. Well, it started with salad, but then it quickly turned into a Salad Nicoise sandwich with tuna and kalamata olives.

I decided that foccacia would be the perfect vehicle for my sandwich, and I decided to embed the olives in the bread. I mean, why not?

The bread was also a great way to use a new flavored olive oil I got from a company called Pasolivo. They have a lot of flavored oils, but the one they sent me was a rosemary oil. I adore rosemary, but it can be kind of strong, so I was fairly conservative with it here - I just used it for drizzling on top of the bread. The rosemary flavor isn't super-strong, but that's exactly what I wanted - a hint of rosemary that would compliment the olives and the final sandwich, without overpowering.

If you're using this bread as a stand-alone and you want more rosemary flavor, you could drizzle more oil on right after baking, or substitute rosemary olive oil for the regular olive oil in the dough. Or, even more fun, you could use the rosemary olive oil as a dipping oil for the bread.

Because I'm still in love with my new grain mill, I ground my own whole wheat flour for this. If you don't have a grain mill, of course you can buy flour. It's what most folks do, right? But ... if you want a grain mill ... well, check out this post.

Whole Wheat Focaccia with Olives, Cheese, and Rosemary

4 1/2 ounces (1 cup) bread flour
4 1/2 ounces (1 cup) whole wheat flour (I used freshly ground flour)
1/2 cup (about 3 ounces) semolina flour
2 1/4 teaspoons Red Star* active dry yeast
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup water (or more, as needed)
2 tablespoons olive oil (divided)
1 tablespoon Pasolivo rosemary-flavored olive oil
1/2 cup pitted and halved Kalamata olives
1/4 to 1/2 shredded mozzarella cheese

Combine the bread flour, whole wheat flour, semolina flour, yeast, cheddar cheese, sugar, salt, water, and 1 tablespoon of olive oil in the bowl of your stand mixer. Mix slowly with the dough hook until it comes together. The dough should be soft and sticky at this point. If it's not soft, and is dense instead, add more water as needed.

I've found that freshly-ground flour tends to require less water, so if you're using store-bought whole wheat flour, you're likely to need another 1/4 cup of water, or possibly a little more.

Increase the speed to medium and continue kneading until the dough is elastic.

Cover the bowl and set aside until doubled in size, about an hour.

When the dough has risen drizzle the remaining tablespoon of olive oil into a quarter-sheet baking pan. Turn the dough out onto the pan and stretch, poke, and cajole the dough to fit the pan. Heat the oven to 375 degrees.

Cover the pan (another quarter-sheet pan turned upside-down makes a great lid) and set aside for 30 minutes.

Drizzle the rosemary olive oil onto the dough. Use your fingertips to dimple the top of the dough randomly. Top the dough with the kalamata olives, spreading them evenly over the dough. Push the olives into the dough. Scatter the mozzarella cheese over the top of the dough. If you want more cheese, I wouldn't say no. But remember - it's not pizza.

Bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes, turning the pan around halfway through the baking time if your oven tends to bake unevenly.

Let the focaccia cool in the pan for a few minutes before turning out onto a rack to cool completely.

Remember that sandwich?

I cut a piece of the focaccia in half and added mayonnaise, tomato, and tuna. It was really good.

*If you use a brand other than Red Star, let it soften in the water before adding the other ingredients.

I received the Pasolivo Rosemary Olive Oil as a sample for review. I decided to use it in a recipe, instead.

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Purple Sweet Potato Wedges #PantryInsiders

Maybe it doesn't happen at your table, but it seems like a lot of holiday meals tend to stay within a pretty limited color scheme. Mostly brown and beige. Maybe veering into the orange of carrots or sweet potatoes or squash.

Green beans might show up, but it's not unusual for them to be covered with crunchy bread crumbs. Crunchy brown bread crumbs.

One way to add a little more color is to trade your orange sweet potatoes for purple ones.

To make them even more ... different, I decided to serve them in wedges rather than the more usual mash. Of course, you could do this with the usual orange sweet potatoes, or mix orange and purple.

The great thing about this recipe is that it can be scaled to feed as many people as you need to.

When you're buying sweet potatoes, get smaller ones so the wedges are reasonable serving sizes without needing to cut them into thin wedges or chunky pieces. If you have no choice except larger potatoes, that's fine, too.

The great thing about these potatoes is that you can start them the day before and finish them in the oven just before serving, so that leaves you plenty of time to fuss with everything else you're serving.

This post is my last post in a series sponsored by Pompeian, and they supplied me with olive oil as well as compensation for these posts. The recipes and methods are all mine and not influenced by the brand. Needless to say, I use a lot of olive oil here, even when posts are not sponsored. I'd like to thank Pompeian for this fun opportunity.

Purple Sweet Potato Wedges

Purple sweet potatoes, as needed
Pompeian extra virgin olive oil
Cinnamon sugar
Kosher salt

Scrub the potatoes and place them in a large pot. Yup, we're boiling them first. This method results in potatoes that are soft and creamy in the center with a little bit of a crust.

Add water to cover, and a teaspoon of salt. Bring the water to a boil, then lower to an active simmer. Cook until the potatoes are tender when poked with a fork. You don't want them mushy, just cooked.

Drain the water.

If you want to finish them tomorrow, refrigerate them. If not, then keep going.

Heat the oven to 375 degrees.

Cut the potatoes in quarters lengthwise to form wedges. If these are too large for individual servings, cut them in half crosswise.

For casual meals, make sweet potato fries using the same method!

Arrange the wedges on a baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil, coating them evenly. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. I suggest a light sprinkle to add a little bit of cinnamon flavor, but you can add as much as you like.

To spread the seasoning more evenly over the potatoes, hold the shaker well above the potatoes rather that sprinkling from a short distance.

Bake to heat and crisp the potatoes, and to warm them if they've cooled off - about 15 minutes - depending on the size of the potatoes and whether you've refrigerated them or not.

Remove the potatoes from the oven and sprinkle with kosher salt before serving. You could sprinkle with salt earlier, but if you do it last, you'll have pretty white sparkly bits of salt on the dark purple potatoes.

Serve hot.

Thanks to Pompeian for sponsoring these posts. You can find them online on the web or Facebook.

Want to do something fun? Pompeian has an app (right here) where you can print a custom label with a family recipe and a family photo that you can put on an olive oil bottle. Wouldn't that make a neat stocking stuffer for the holidays?

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Roasted Cheese"Popcorn" Cauliflower #PantryInsiders

I've been working with Pompeian on some sponsored posts, and I've had a chance to use a number of their products.

This time, the product is something that's brand-spanking new.

That's one of the great things about being a food blogger - I get to try things that might not even be on grocery store shelves.

This time, the product was a canola and olive oil spray with 85 percent canola and 15 percent olive oil, and no propellants. I've been using the oil for a lot of things in the kitchen - spraying baking pans, spraying saute pans, spraying potatoes before I baked them ... spraying pretty much everything.

Heck, if you're watching your calories, you could spray this on your salad and just add a squeeze of lemon juice or a splash of balsamic vinegar.

Since the oil has a smoke point of 410-425 degrees, it's fine for searing, sauteeing, baking, or pretty much anything you need it to do.

The funny thing is that since this was such a useful product, I used it for all sorts of common tasks, but when it came to thinking up a recipe, I had recipe block. Like writer's block, except that I couldn't come up with a recipe idea that was blog-worthy.

But then I had the brainstorm. And this happened.

If you look at small cauliflower florets, they sort of look like popped popcorn, right? That's part of the inspiration for this dish.

If you can't find cheddar cheese powder at your local store, it can be purchased online from spice shops. There are also cheese powders sold for flavoring popcorn. If you use that, make sure you taste it - some of them are salty.

Roasted Cheese "Popcorn" Cauliflower

1 head cauliflower, divided into small florets
Even spray of Pompeian OlivExtra Original Spray
Sprinkle of salt or seasoned salt
Cheddar cheese powder, to coat

Line a sheet pan with a silicone mat for easy cleanup, and heat the oven to 350 degrees. Make sure the cauliflower pieces are all a similar size. If some florets are too large, cut them in half or in quarters.

Arrange the florets on the baking sheet in a single layer. Spray with a light coating of the Pompeian OlivExtra Orginal Spray. This will help the cheese powder stick.

Sprinkle with salt, to taste (and remember to take into account how salty your cheese powder is) and then sprinkle with cheese powder.

Roast the cauliflower at 350 degrees 40 minutes, stirring the cauliflower about halfway through the cooking time. Test one. It should be folk-tender, but not mushy. It's fine if there's a little bit of bite, but it shouldn't be crunchy.

Increase the heat to 400 degrees and roast the cauliflower until it's lightly browned in spots, another 10 to 15 minutes. Stir, if needed, after 10 minutes. Or, if you like you can broil for just a minute or two.

Serve hot.

Although ... can I admit that I like this cold, as well. It's a nice little snack and it makes a pretty garnish on top of a salad.

This post was sponsored by Pompeian. I received product for my use in developing the recipe, and compensation for recipe development. All words and ideas are mine. Look for Pompeian on Facebook!

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No-Butter Biscuits #PantryInsiders

The nice folks at Pompeian, who have been sponsoring posts on this blog, came up with an interesting theme: Use olive oil in place of butter in a recipe that traditionally uses butter. And try to replace all the butter with oil.

Hmmm. Welllllll. Huh.

The first thing I thought of was corn on the cob. But that's not much of a recipe. I mean, I did think of brushing the corn with oil and then adding other stuff, like herbs or cheese. But it's still not much of a recipe. Tasty idea, though ...

What other recipes traditionally use butter? Recipes where you'd assume there's butter, without even thinking about it?

I probably could have come up with a number of recipes that used just a few teaspoons of butter, but I wanted to come up with a recipe that used a significant amount, because I like to challenge myself, even when it's not required.

And I wanted one more hurdle to jump over. I didn't want to rehash something I made before - I wanted to come up with something new for this post. I made cakes and cookies with oil before, and they worked out really well, so baking sounded like fun.

I decided on biscuits.

Why?

Well, because most biscuit recipes we think about have butter in them. And it's a significant part of the recipe. So changing butter to oil is ... uh ... fat-changing? I guess it could be life-changing, if you're doing it for the diet rather than for the fun of it, right?

And also because I wanted biscuits for dinner. Sometimes it is all about practicality.

I made eight small but tall biscuits, but if you prefer shorter, wider biscuits, just roll the final shape a little larger before cutting.

To help me on my quest, Pompeian sent a bottle of their OlivExtra Premium Mediterranean blend, with canola, olive, and grapeseed oils. The flavor was mild, but pleasant.

So I embarked on this madness. There's still some butterfat in the recipe, since I used milk and yogurt, but there's no solid butter. No butter butter. And you could use nonfat milk and yogurt, if you wanted to.

No-Butter Biscuits

2 cups (9 ounces) all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup Pompeian OlivExtra Premium Mediterranean blend
1/2 cup Greek-style yogurt
1/4 cup milk
1 egg

Heat the oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, salt, and baking powder. Whisk or stir to make sure the paking powder and salt are well-mixed into the flour. Set aside.

In a small bowl (or you can do this in a 2-cup measuring cup), combine the oil, yogurt, milk, and egg. You should have 1 1/4 cups of liquid. If it's a little short, add more milk. If it's a little more (since egg sizes can vary) it's fine. No worries. Whisk this to combine.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix just until all the flour is moistened. If the dough seems dry and it's hard to incorporate all the flour, add a little extra milk, as needed. The dough should be soft rather than dense. If it seems wet or gloppy, that's fine - we can incorporate more flour when folding.

Flour your work surface and turn out the dough. Flour the top of the dough. use a rolling pin to roll the dough approximately 1/2-inch thick, adding flour as needed to keep the dough from sticking to the rolling pin or the counter. Fold the dough in thirds, like a letter.

Roll the dough again to 1/2-inch thick, flouring the dough and work surface as needed. Fold the dough in thirds, as before.

This time, roll the dough to slightly larger than 4 inches by 8 inches and keep the sides as straight as possible. It should be about an inch thick.

Trim the outside edges of the dough to straighten those edges, then cut the dough in half to form two 4-inch squares. I used a pizza cutter to trim the dough, but a sharp knife is fine. Then cut each square into quarters. You should have eight squares total, plus the trimmings.

Arrange the squares on the baking sheet. You can leave them farther apart if you want them crisper around the edges, or place them close together, or even touching, if you want more rise and soft edges.

Bake at 350 degrees until the biscuits are nicely browned, about 25 minutes.

Remove the biscuits from the pan and cool on a rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Pompeian has sponsored this post as part of the Pantry Insiders program.

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Basil Pesto Marinade/Dressing/Sauce/Drizzle/Dip #PantryInsiders

A local food emporium had samples of a basil dressing/marinade that I was pretty impressed with. But perhaps a bit too much garlic.

Let me explain. I happen to love garlic. But lately it seems like every recipe I make has an abundance of garlic.

Well, except the ice cream. 

But like anything else, there comes a point when enough is enough. Although the basil flavor in the dressing was lovely, I decided that there was just a smidgen too much garlic for me to spend the money on it. And then I remembered the bag of basil I bought at the farmers market. I had used some of the basil for a few recipes, but I had plenty left. So why not make my own garlic-lite basil dressing?

Besides the lightening of the garlic flavor (this still has a smidge), this isn't exactly the same as the dressing in the store. I decided to make it a little bit creamy by adding mayonnaise, and it also helped to emulsify and thicken the dressing.

I used Pompeian olive oil and red wine vinegar, since I've been working with them on their #PantryInsiders promotion. It's nice to work with companies that have products I use every day. And let me tell you, I go through olive oil like it grow on trees.

As part of their program, Pompeian hosted an on-air live olive oil tasting a while back. It was pretty interesting, and a little weird. I mean, how often do you sit around and taste a bunch of different olive oils?

But, it was a great way to really taste the differences. When I open a new bottle of olive oil, I usually taste it to see how sharp or peppery or fruity or mellow it is, but except when I was at a store that had samples, I don't think I've ever tasted that many varieties of oil.

After the tasting, Pompeian, offered to send us our favorite oil, and I chose the Arbequina, which is what I used here. It was the mildest and smoothest of the varietals, but with more flavor than the light olive oil.

My first use of this basil dressing was on top of some farmers market tomatoes and fresh mozzarella, but it would also be great as a salad dressing, as a marinade, a drizzle over pork, chicken, or fish, or even on pasta. Or for dipping bread into. Or ... hmmm ... I'm sure I'll think of other things.

Like spreading it on a sandwich, or mixing into some scrambled eggs.

Maybe I should go make some more. I might not have enough.

Creamy Basil Dressing

2 cups lightly packed basil leaves (and tender stems, if you like)
1/2 cup lightly packed flat-leaf parsley
2 tablespoons roughly snipped chives
1/4 cup Pompeian red wine vine vinegar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
Several grinds black pepper
Pinch of garlic powder (optional)
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup Pompeian Arbequina olive oil

Combine everything except the olive oil in your blender or food processor and blend until the herbs are blitzed into small bits. Scrape down the sides of the container as needed to make sure you don't have any large leaves left.

With the blender or food processor running, add the oil. Or, if you prefer, you can transfer the mixture to a bowl and whisk the oil in. Or transfer to a jar, add the oil, and shake until combined.

Taste and adjust seasonings as desired. Keep in mind when you're tasting that you're not going to be eating this with a spoon - you'll be serving a small amount with other things.

Serve immediately, or refrigerate until needed.

This post is sponsored by Pompeian as part of the #PantryInsiders program.

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Honey Roasted Onions

One of my husband's favorite parts of pot roast or stew is when I include whole onions (or halved, if they're really big) in the stew. They get softer and sweeter and they take on the flavors from the stew.

So when I found a recipe for roasted onions in Tyler Florence's cookbook Tyler Florence's Real Kitchen, I had to give them a try. And then I had to adapt the recipe a bit. Or a lot, actually. His recipe has 1/3 cup honey and 2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, and uses red onions. And his cooking instructions are different.

But in any case, the credit for the idea goes to Tyler Florence.

I got the honey from a company called Nazareth Secret, and it's a honey imported from Israel. It's got a nice flavor and good traditions behind it. It might have been better suited for stirring into my tea, or other applications where the honey flavor would have been more prominent. But ... it worked well in cooking too.

Honey Roasted Onions
Recipe adapted from Tyler Florence's Real Kitchen

4-6 large onions
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup Nazareth Secret honey
2 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves
Salt and pepper, to taste.

Heat the oven to 375 degrees.

Peel and trim the onions and slice in half through the root end (so the halves stay together).

Line a baking sheet** with aluminum foil for easier cleanup. Chances are there will be some burnt sugar to deal with, and it's easier to toss the foil than scrub the pan.

Combine the oil, honey, thyme, salt, and pepper in a large bowl that will fit your onions as well. If you're not sure how much salt and pepper, use 1/2 teaspoon of salt and three or four grinds of pepper from your mill - or about 1/4 teaspoon.

Whisk to combine, then add the onions and stir them around to coat with the mixture. Place the onions, cut side up, on the prepared pan. Leave the remaining liquid in the bowl - you'll be using that later.

Place the onions in the oven and bake until tender. Depending on the onions, this will take an hour or longer.

BUT ! ! !

After about 30 minutes of baking time, remove the pan from the oven and divide the remaining honey/oil mixture on top of each onion. At this point, the onion layers should be less tight, and the liquid will drizzle into the onions as well as coating the top.

Continue cooking, stopping every 10-15 minutes to scoop up the liquid from the bottom of the pan to drizzle it on top of the onions.

** Now that I've contemplated this a bit, I think a 9x13 baking pan might make more sense than a flat baking sheet. The onions could be cooked, covered, for the first 15-20 minutes to steam them and encourage them to cook faster, then drizzle with the oil/honey mixture and keep cooking, drizzing and basting regularly until the onions are done. Also, since most of the oil/honey drips off the onions right away, so I'm thinking that there's no need to try to coat the onions at all at the beginning - just drizzle some of the mixture on top of the onions at the beginning, and then regularly throughout the cooking time - which should also be shorter if they're cooked covered at first.

If you make these, let me know what you do and how they work for you!

I received the honey from the manufacturer, but I was not required to write about it. The book was part of the Cook My Book group exchange. More about that here.

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Got tomatoes? Make SALAD! #DressingItUp #PantryInsiders

When I went to the farmer's market last weekend, I was giddy to see heirloom tomatoes in pretty colors.

It's still way too early for tomatoes to be harvested from fields, so these were greenhouse-grown. But still, they were local and they were colorful ... and I've been tomato-deprived for quite some time.

So, it made sense to overload a salad with tomatoes. Okay, there are other vegetables in the salad, but I used 1 1/2 tomatoes (1/2 a tomato in three different colors for one salad. Just for me.

Yes, I do like salad.

Salad: It's What's for Lunch

For the garnish:
1 small cucumber, diced
1/4 cup diced red onion
Pinch of salt (1/8 teaspoon)
1 teaspoon Pompeian red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons water

For the dressing:
1 tablespoon Pompeian red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon creme fraiche
2 tablespoons Pompeian extra virgin olive oil
1/2 teaspoon dry thyme
Pinch of salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar

For the salad:
1 small romaine heart
1/2 small zucchini, thinly sliced
1 1/2 heirloom tomatoes, cut in wedges
Salt, freshly ground black pepper, and paprika, to taste

To make the garnish:

Combine all the ingredients in a small bowl. Set aside for at least 30 minutes. This will mellow the onion and allow the cucumber to take up the flavor of the wine vinegar.

You can make this the day before, if you like. If your onion is very sweet, you could get away with a shorter marinating time. If the onions are harsh, let them marinate longer, to mellow them.

To make the dressing:
Combine all the ingredients in a small jar or salad shaker and shake to combine. You can also whisk this together in a small bowl.

To make the salad:
Put the romaine on a plate and top with the zucchini slices and tomato wedges. Sprinkle the salt, pepper and paprika on top. Drizzle the salad dressing on, then add as much of the garnish as you like.

This post is sponsored by Pompeian as part of the #PantryInsiders program.

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Shrimp with Herbed Olive Oil #PantryInsiders

This is the first of a series of articles I'm writing for Pompeian, makers of olive oils and vinegars. Right up my alley. I go through olive oil like it grows on trees.

hehe.

Pompeian has three oils in its Varietals Collection, which are oils made from a single variety of olive. I chose to work with the Picholine, since it's an olive I'm familiar with, but I've never tried a picholine olive oil.

The other two oils in the collection are Arbequina and Koroneiki.

One cool thing about these single-source oils is that you can look up the origin of the oil, including the mill, the country, and the harvest date. All you need is the lot number from the bottle. Or use your smart phone and scan the QR code on the bottle.

Mine came from Morocco.

Even better is that these oils are affordable - you're not going to have to dip into the college fund to make a salad - they sell for about $6.99 for a 16-ounce bottle, but I've seen them locally for less.

The picholine was described as "a medium-bodied oil with a green fruitiness, hints of herbs and a pleasing balance of bitterness, great for meats and sauces." So it was the middle-ground between the other two. I tasted it and started brainstorming. I wanted a recipe where you could taste the oil, but not just oil drizzled over something.

I decided to pair it with shrimp. And, I've got two options for you.

This recipe takes advantage of parsley stems - the part you're likely to throw away for other recipes. You don't have to use the stems, but if you bought parsley for another recipe, you might as well use stems for this.

Otherwise, use leaves and stems of about 1/4 of a bunch of parsley. Eyeball it - this doesn't need to be exact.

Shrimp with Herb Oil (or mayo!)

1/2 cup Pompeian Picholine olive oil, divided
2 cloves garlic, peeled
Stems from 1 large bunch parsley
12 extra-large shrimp, peeled and cleaned
Salt, to taste
1/4 cup prepared mayonnaise (optional)
Lemon juice (optional)

Heat 1/4 cup of olive oil on gentle heat in a nonskillet add the garlic and cook, stirring as needed. until the garlic is cooked and soft. It's fine if the garlic browns a little, but don't let it burn. If it does, start over.

Pour the oil and garlic into your food processor add the parsley and the remaining 1/4 cup of olive oil and a generous pinch of salt. Process until the mixture is as smooth as you can get it to be.

Strain the mixture through a fine strainer and discard the solid bits - we're just after the flavored oil. Taste and add more salt, if desired.

Heat the skillet again with the residual oil - you can add more if you think you need it, but you shouldn't need more than a teaspoon or so.

Cook the shrimp in the skillet, turning them over when cooked on one side, until just cooked through.

Serve warm, drizzled with the herb oil. Drizzle with a bit of lemon juice, if you like.

Shrimp with Herb and Olive Oil Mayo

These shrimp, served cold, are excellent with a green herb-olive oil mayo. Here's how.

Put the 1/4 cup of prepared mayonnaise in a small bowl. Drizzle the flavored oil into the mayonnaise, whisking to incorporate it.

If you add it slowly and keep whisking, the oil will emulsify into the mayonnaise and it will stay thick, rather than thinning out.

Taste, after you've added two tablespoons of the flavored oil and add more oil, if desired - how much you add is totally up to you. Add more salt, if needed. You can also add a bit of lemon juice, if you like.

Serve the mayonnaise with chilled shrimp.

If you make more mayonnaise than you need, you can thin it with a bit of buttermilk or or milk and use it as a salad dressing or drizzle over vegetables.

This post is sponsored by Pompeian as part of the #PantryInsiders program.

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Three-Pepper Shrimp and Pasta

I love it when an idea comes together. I wanted to make a shrimp and pasta dish, but I didn't want to go with the usual tomato sauce. But I wanted it to be colorful. So, I turned to my good friend, roasted red peppers.

With the red and the green, this is a pretty festive dish, and perfect for a holiday or pre-holiday meal with the typical colors of Christmas.

In the summer when peppers are plentiful and cheap, I roast my own, but in winter, I'm perfectly happy to buy them. Luckily, they're a lot more plentiful these days than back when you could only buy them in tiny jars.

You might think that 1/4 cup of olive oil is a lot, but think about it - there's pretty much no other fat here, and it's four servings. That's only 1 tablespoon of oil per serving, and you have to figure that there will be some left in the bottom of the bowl or the pot. There's probably more oil in the salad dressing that you're slathering on your lettuce. Or more butter on your toast.

If you wanted to, you could make this with twice as much pasta to stretch it a bit, but I liked this ratio of shrimp and vegetables to the pasta. Don't get me wrong - I love pasta. But I also love shrimp.

This is a great dish when you don't have a lot of time to cook - everything cooks pretty quickly, so you can have everything done in the time it takes to cook your pasta. To make it an even more convenient after-work meal, you can have the vegetables prepped ahead of time, so you can just throw them in the pan.

I used frozen, peeled, medium-sized tail-off shrimp, but fresh would be wonderful. However, I live pretty far from oceans here, so the "fresh" shrimp at most places is frozen shrimp that has been thawed. Or, it's insanely expensive it it really is fresh.

Frozen shrimp is just fine with me. You can toss it in the pan frozen, or thaw first - either way works with a slight change in directions.

For a more upscale meal, you could opt for larger shrimp. Like, you know, if you were serving this on Christmas Eve.

This post was sponsored by Carapelli, and I used their Extra Virgin Olive Oil for this dish. Check out the GIVEAWAY after the recipe.

Three-Pepper Shrimp and Pasta
Makes 4 servings

1/4 cup Carapelli Extra Virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, sliced into thin half-moons
1 green pepper, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced or put through a garlic press
Pinch of red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon marjoram
Generous pinch of salt
1 cup roasted red bell peppers, roughly chopped
10 ounces frozen peeled, tail-off shrimp
1/2 pound uncooked thin spaghetti, cooked al dente

Heat the oil in a large saute pan until it's warm - but you don't want it smoking hot. Add the onion and green pepper and stir. Add the garlic, pepper flakes, marjoram, and salt. Stir again. Cook, stirring as needed until the vegetables are almost cooked through. Add the red peppers.

If you're using frozen shrimp, add them now and cook until they're thawed and beginning to cook. If you're using thawed or fresh shrimp, add the shrimp and al dente pasta at the same time. Cook until the shrimp are cooked through and the liquid has been mostly absorbed. If the pan becomes dry and the shrimp aren't quite done, add a bit of the pasta cooking water and continue cooking.

Serve hot.

This post is sponsored by Carapelli through Virtual Potluck, a fun group of bloggers that you really ought to meet! I received product to use and compensation for creating the recipe, but all words are my own.

Want to WIN?

Carapelli is giving away three of their olive oils to six lucky winners. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Olive Oil Snow - Molecular Gastronomy at Home

I never let the fact that I don't know what the heck I'm doing stop me from plunging ahead.

In this case, I bought a pound of tapioca maltodextrin. If that sounds scary, let's just say that you've probably eaten it in commercial products before.

But it's also the darling of the molecular gastronomy folks who use it to turn fats into powder.

When my bucket o' fun arrived, I set it aside, thinking that I'd do some research, figure out how much to use, and if I needed to do anything special to mix it.

But I couldn't wait long. I figured I'd just play around with it and see what happened. Hey, I've seen it used on Chopped, and they never made a big deal about it. It couldn't be too complicated.

I put some olive oil in a little ramekin. Added a teeny bit of the powder. Stirred it up.

Nothing.

I added more. And more.

Turns out you need quite a bit before the oil turns into powder. I tasted it a few times as I went on, but when it was fluffy-powdery, it didn't have much flavor at all.

Hmmmm.

So then I added some basil olive oil for extra flavor. Good choice. It wasn't as fluffy-powdery with the added oil, but it was definitely a dry product. It stuck together a bit, but that's okay. And then I added just a little salt for more flavor.

So, now what? I figured it would be good on tomatoes. So I sliced some tomatoes, arranged them on a plate, and put the powder on top.

That was pretty plating for maybe a minute or so, but then the liquid from the tomatoes started to melt the powder. Oops. I hadn't considered that.

So I, um ... ate the tomatoes. It tasted pretty good with that basil oil. And then I replated with the powder on the side. That made more sense, and it still looked interesting - I mean, most folks would be curious about the powder, right?

So, what have we learned here?

You need something with more flavor than plain olive oil for the powder to make sense, you need quite a bit of the tapioca maltodextrin to absorb the oil, and you need to plate it so that it stays dry.

Oh, and we've also learned that sometimes I am a bit of a mad scientist in the kitchen. And sometimes it even works.

I'm thinking I might try butter. Or clarified butter, maybe. And then I'll see what else it can do.

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Marinated Grilled Skirt Steak

Skirt steak is one of my favorite cuts of beef. I enjoy a good prime rib or ribeye, but skirt steak is so great for marinating and grilling. Cut against the grain, it's perfectly tender, too.

The one teeny mistake I made with this steak was that I marinated it without cutting it first. Which could have been okay, except that once I got it on the grill, I realized that if I wanted even cooking I was going to have to cut it into sections. So I ended up whacking it into four pieces after it was on the grill.

The aji panca chili paste is a dark red paste that I bought in a small jar. I thought it needed a bit of sweetness and tartness, and the first thing I thought of was the black cherry balsamic vinegar that I bought recently. It was the perfect balance for the chili paste, and the hint of fruitiness it added to the steak was just about perfect.

Marinated Grilled Skirt Steak

1 skirt steak
1/4 cup aji panca chili paste
2 tablespoons black cherry balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt

Put everything into a zip-top plastic bag and massage it around to coat the steak with the marinade. Set aside for an hour, if you have the time. Or, refrigerate for a couple hours.

Heat your grill (or, you can use a grill pan) an cook the steak on both sides on high heat to get grill marks. This cooks quickly since it's so thin, so watch it carefully, and don't overcook.

Let the steak rest for 10 minutes before slicing against the grain to serve.

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Vinegar and Oil

Have you ever been to a store that sells olive oil and vinegar? Oh, I don't mean a grocery store that has a couple shelves full of oils and vinegars -  mean a store that sells mostly olive oil and vinegar.

Yup. a whole store.

Picasso's Olive Oil opened here in Longmont recently and I spend some quality time tasting and testing the various oils and vinegars.

I have to tell you, I really don't need more versions of vinegar or oil. But that doesn't stop me from tasting, sampling, testing, and ... okay, well ... maybe buying.

You can find a few boutique, varietal and flavored olive oils at most regular grocery stores. Specialty grocers have more variety. But this shop had a whole lot more, like wild mushroom and sage oil, or Milanese gremolata oil.

And then there are the flavored balsamic vinegars. Oh my.

I didn't sample everything in the store - just the vinegars and oils that were a little different from the ones I've tried before. I mean, I've used lemon, lime, garlic and basil olive oils. And I love them all. But this time around, I wanted to find some things that were different.

My first interesting discovery among the oils was a butter-flavored olive oil.

You know how people describe some olive oils as "buttery"? Usually that means it's smoother and milder than the oils that are fruity or spicy. This oil was more buttery than that. I decided it would be good on popcorn, or as a finishing oil on poached fish, or as a mild dipping oil for bread.

Or for cooking, when I want a mild, buttery flavor. Like maybe eggs, hmmm?

When  started sampling vinegars, I was really smitten with the black cherry balsamic. It reminded me of a tart cherry syrup. This would be great on ice cream or over fruit or in baking or slathered on duck, pork, or chicken. Or to add depth of flavor to a fruit pie.

Or, in a cocktail. Yes, I said it. Cocktail. I'm working on something now. Stay tuned for the crazy.

Picasso Olive Oil is at 2055 Ken Pratt Blvd. in Longmont. You can also order online. This is NOT a sponsored post. I just happened to go there and thought it was worth writing about.

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Strawberry-Balsamic Salad Dressing

I love salads, and I always make my own salad dressing. Making a simple vinegar and oil salad dressing was one of my very first kitchen tasks when I was a little kid, and I've been making salad dressings ever since.

My first dressings were pretty simple - vinegar, oil, salt, pepper, maybe a sprinkle of sugar. Maybe some herbs.

When I was a little kid, the only vinegars my mother had were plain white vinegar, cider vinegar, and red wine vinegar. And the oil choices were pretty slim, too. I think it might have been generic vegetable oil.

Now, my oil and vinegar choices are vast, and I've got a whole array of other interesting things I can add. This time, I took advantage of strawberries. I used them in the dressing, and then I also added sliced strawberries to the salad, as well.

As I started pawing through the refrigerator looking for salad makings, I realized that I had a lot of ingredients, in the red-pink range. I used radicchio, baby red peppers, radishes, and strawberries.

If I had red onions, I might have added those, too.

Strawberry-Balsamic Salad Dressing

6 medium strawberries
2 tablespoons white balsamic vinegar*
2 tablespoons lemon olive oil
2 tablespoons mild-flavored oil
Pinch of salt
1 teaspoon agave syrup (or to taste)

Put the strawberries, white balsamic vinegar, oils, and salt in your blender, and blend until smooth. Taste for seasoning and add more salt, if needed.

If the dressing is too tart for your taste, add agave syrup (or honey or sugar) to taste.

*Red wine vinegar would also be lovely. Regular balsamic vinegar would taste fine, but would muddy the color of the dressing. Champagne vinegar, white wine vinegar, or any other light-colored vinegar that you like would also work.

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All about cooking oil, smoke points, and tips for using oil for cooking

When you're about to throw some food into a frying pan, you probably want a little oil in the pan, too. But what's the right oil to use?

Flavor, of course, is a consideration. Sometimes you want to add the flavor of the oil to your dish. But sometimes you want the most neutral flavor you can find.

Cost is a factor, too. If you're deep-frying a turkey, you probably don't want to use an artisanal oil that's sold in cut-glass 4-ounce bottles. You want something that's sold by the gallon at a reasonable price.

Smokin' Hot!

And then there's the smoke point. Which is important, but somewhat mysterious, too.

The smoke point is the temperature where a particular oil will ... well, smoke. It will begin to break down and burn when it reaches a high enough temperature. After the smoke point comes the flash point - the temperature at which the oil will burst into flames and you'll be calling the fire department.

Okay, maybe not that dramatic if you flame the tablespoon of oil in your frying pan, but still not a pleasant event. Flaming alcohol is good. Burning oil is not. Besides being a fire hazard, the flavor of the oil will change when it begins to burn and smoke, and generally not in a pleasant way. At best, you lose the subtle nuances of a great oil. At worst, it tastes really, really terrible.

If heating your oil to the smoke point is a bad thing, you might wonder why some recipes suggest heating your oil until you see the first wisp of smoke and then adding the food. Seems wrong, right? But in those cases, adding the food lowers the temperature of the pan (and the oil) quickly, so you're immediately below the smoke point. And your steak is nicely seared.

The confusing thing about smoke point is that for every type of oil, there's a range of smoke points, depending on how refined the oil is, how old the oil is (as oil breaks down over time, its smoke point get lower), and what brand of oil you're using.

The more impurities in an oil, the lower the smoke point. That's because it's the non-oil particles in the oil that are going to burn first. That's why butter, with all its lovely milkfat solids, has a much lower smoke point that ghee, which has had all those solids removed.

Impurities in oil are not necessarily a bad thing. The minuscule bits of olive particles in an olive oil can give that oil a lot of flavor. In fact, there are plenty of unfiltered olive oils that have a lot of those bits remaining. And there are flavored oils as well, with citrus, pepper or herb flavors infused into the oils. But are they good for cooking? Maybe... or not.

Some oils have a smoke point printed on the label, and if that's the case, that's the number you can assume to be correct. The manufacturer knows how filtered or refined the oil is, and probably has tested the oil to determine its smoke point. Other oils are labeled "high-heat" oil, and you can assume they're also going to perform well at higher temperatures.

But what about unlabeled oils?

Any highly-flavored oil is probably not intended for cooking, or at least not in great quantities or at high heat. Unfiltered or unrefined oils are also best used as finishing oils, or for very gentle cooking. So you know what not to use to fry your fries. But what oils are good for searing that steak?

After looking at bottles and checking online sources, I found a pretty wide range of smoke points for all of the common cooking oils.

Some of these oils are easily available in every version from unfiltered to very refined (like olive oil) while others are more likely to be refined (like canola or peanut oil). To be honest, I don't think I've ever seen a non-refined version of canola oil, and I've only seen one type of unrefined peanut oil, and I'm pretty sure no one would have mistaken that for a high-heat cooking oil.

But somewhere, unrefined oils of every variety probably exist. So check labels for clues, and then you can figure out what the smoke point should be.

When you're cooking in a pan, how hot is that pan?

If you're deep-frying, you should be using a thermometer to monitor the temperature of the oil. But you can't measure the heat in a frying pan the same way. So how hot is a "hot" pan?

If you look at an electric frying pan or similar device, the temperatures probably look something like this:

High: 450-500F
Medium High: 375-400F
Medium: 325-350F
Medium-Low: 275-300F
Low: 225-250

But remember how I said that adding food to a hot pot will lower the temperature of the pan? Think about it. Water boils at 202 degrees where I live (more likely 212 degrees where you live) so the temperature of that water will help keep the cooking pot (relatively) cool, no matter how hot you crank the heat. The water keeps the pan cool, because the water temperature can't rise above the boiling point.

Then, when you add room-temperature pasta to a pot of boiling water, that water stops boiling, since the cooler food has lowered the temperature of the water even more.

That same sort of thing happens in a frying pan, as well.

While you're not going to be boiling water in an oiled pan, your food has water in it, and since that water has an upper temperature limit, that will keep the heat in the pan down, at least where the food meets the pan. Of course, the solid matter in the food, as well as the fat, can reach a higher temperature, but those water molecules are never very far away.

And since the food you add to the pan is at a much lower temperature to begin with, that pan cools pretty quickly when the food goes in, just like the pasta water that stopped boiling when the noodles took a dive.

The actual cooking temperature of foods with a high water content, like that big pan of vegetables you're cooking, is likely to be under 300 degrees. Most foods are going to be below 375 degrees under normal cooking conditions. Of course, that depends on the type of pan you're using, how long you heat it, and what sort of food you're cooking. A cast iron pan on high heat for an hour might be glowing red and ready to incinerate anything it comes in contact with, but that's not how most people preheat a pan.

But most foods don't need super-high heat anyway. You want a really hot pan for searing a steak because you want that crusty exterior. But you probably don't want that same effect on your onions and garlic. Or your pancakes.

Taking its temperature - without a thermometer.

If you don't have an infrared thermometer to check the temperature of your hot pan, there are other ways to tell how hot a pan is. Below 212 degrees, a drop of water tossed into a pan will flatten out and evaporate slowly. Above 212 degrees, the water will hiss and evaporate quickly. When the temperature reaches about 375 degrees, droplets of water will dance across the surface of the pan, and that's what many recipes would call a "hot" pan.

Some recipes also suggest looking at the oil in a pan, waiting until it "ripples" in the pan, or waiting for those first telltale wisps of smoke. Which, of course, tells you more about the oil that has reached its limit, than about the actual heat of the pan.

Hot pan - cold oil, or cold pan - cold oil?

Which leads us to the question of when to add oil to a pan. You might have heard the phrase, "hot pan, cold oil; food won't stick" popularized by The Frugal Gourmet. But is it valid?

Harold McGee agrees that the pan should be heated before the oil is added, but he's not as concerned about the sticking. Instead, he says that adding the oil later means that it won't have as much time to break down as it heats up in the pan, so this is better for the oil. Which is better for the flavor of the food.

Others go a step further and say that they don't put oil in the pan at all, but coat their food with the oil instead. This gives the oil even less time to oxidize or burn. This method makes a lot of sense for grilling or when you're used a ridged grill pan.

Cook's Illustrated, on the other hand, allegedly insists on NEVER heating a pan unless it has oil in it. I couldn't find the original statement from them, but I found plenty of references to the admonition, and I heard the same thing from a Cook's Illustrated alum.

I'm not sure why they take this stand, but I suspect it's has to do with potential damage to the pan. It makes sense with nonstick or coated pans since you don't want to damage the coating or have it give off fumes. But I'm not sure what the problem would be with heating an empty cast iron pan, which is pretty much essential when making or heating tortillas, since they're cooked without any oil at all. And spices are often toasted in a dry pan as well.

Most cooking, though, is done with some fat in the pan, whether it's a cooking oil, butter, or duck fat. And pretty much any fat can be used in cooking, as long as you don't raise the heat too high.

I gleaned the following smoke point temperatures from a number of sources. The temperature ranges for some of the oils are due to different opinions on the smoke point. Others, like olive oil, are due to the fact that there are a wide range oils available.

When it comes to olive oil, the unrefined olive oil should probably be saved for use in cold preparations while extra virgin olive oil can take some heat and extra light olive oil can be used for high-temperature cooking.

Smoke Points of Common Cooking Oils and Fats

Butter: 250-350F
Butter (clarified or ghee): 375-485F

Canola oil: 375-450F

Coconut oil: 350-450F

Corn oil: 320-450F
Chicken/duck fat: 375-392F

Grapeseed oil: 420-485F

Lard: 360-400F 

Olive oil: 320-468F

Palm oil: 420-455F

Peanut oil: 320-450F 

Safflower oil: 225-510F

Soybean oil: 320-460F

Sunflower oil: 320-440F

Vegetable shortening: 325-370F

There are a number of other oils that can be used for cooking - even at high heat - like avocado oil which has a smoke point in excess of 500 degrees for the refined version. But it's a relatively expensive oil that most people would use for its flavor rather than its cooking properties.

To me, the interesting thing is that most oils - if you choose the refined versions - can be used in a pan that has passed the "dancing water droplet" test at 375 degrees. But just because you can cook with an oil, it doesn't mean that you should - some oils really are all about the flavor.

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