Roasted Fig Salad

There’s more to Rosh Hashana than round challah, brisket, kugel, and apples dipped in honey. It’s a celebration of the new year, a time to start fresh, and I couldn’t think of any better way to begin the holiday than at my sister’s apartment where she and her husband hosted their first grown-up dinner/family holiday meal. I’m not going to discuss the meal as a whole because I’m hoping to convince her to guest blog about the experience, but I will talk about one of my contributions: roasted fig salad.

One of the things I was asked to bring was the salad course and I knew almost immediately that I wanted it to include figs. For one thing, figs have been on my mind lately and I’ve been looking for an excuse to experiment with them a bit. Second, in general I like fruit in salads (it’s that whole sweet-savory palate thing) but in this case figs seemed extremely fitting for both seasonal and symbolic reasons.

But, of course, there’s a twist: roasting the figs. This is very simple to do and requires no more effort than it takes to quarter a bunch of figs, chop some rosemary and cook those ingredients in the oven with olive oil. Roasting the figs deepens their flavors and infuses them with the savory elements of fresh rosemary.

After the figs have been roasted all that’s left is to toast the walnuts, whip up a quick balsamic vinaigrette and toss it all together with arugula and shaved manchego cheese. The bitter, astringent, peppery and tangy flavors of those ingredients work to balance the sweetness of the figs.

This recipe is great not only for Rosh Hashana, but for anytime you’re craving a filling and delicious salad, so long as fresh figs are available.

Here’s the recipe:

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Dark Chocolate Cheesecake with Cherry Mousse

Someone asked me recently what my cooking style is. While I can’t claim to be as specific as “Italian cuisine” or “healthy cooking,” I think my style is best described as working with ingredients and ideas that inspire me. Take this recipe for dark chocolate cheesecake with cherry mousse.

The process started after I bought sour cherries on a whim and was having a difficult time deciding how to use them. I’d already made a cherry crumble this summer and I just haven’t been feeling very pie-y. So I decided to think outside the box (sorry, term leftover from my PR days) and came up with cherry mousse.

The original idea was to fill white chocolate cupcakes with cherry mousse but I wasn’t thrilled with how the cupcakes turned out. They had great flavor but the texture was a bit off. And they weren’t real chocolate. I guess that’s what I get for breaking my self-imposed no-white-chocolate-because-it’s-not-really-chocolate rule.

Rather than attempt the cupcakes again, I decided to switch gears and go with real chocolate.  The question was should I make cupcakes again or try something different. After spending way too much time thinking about how to use the cherry mousse (we’re talking half a day of indecision here, SO not normal) I finally settled on dark chocolate cheesecake because The Flavor Bible okayed the combination of cherries, dark chocolate and cream cheese. And I do whatever The Flavor Bible says.

The result was incredible. I splurged on high-end chocolate (Scharffen Berger 70% bittersweet cocoa bar) which made for a rich and creamy cheesecake. Its smooth, light texture contrasted perfectly with the crispy chocolate wafer crust and the sweet, bright flavor of the cherry mousse balanced the richness of the cheesecake to create a perfect bite.

Dark chocolate cheesecake with cherry mousse equals optimum summer decadence. That, my friends, is my cooking style.

Dark Chocolate Cheesecake with Cherry Mousse

Here’s the recipe:

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By now you should all be pretty familiar with my cooking style and food philosophy: you know I believe in fresh, unprocessed ingredients, sourced locally when possible (something I’m working on getting better at), that are cooked and presented in a slightly rustic and approachable manner. I like to use as few pots and pans as possible, keep the recipes uncomplicated and make most of the components from scratch.

It’s these last two points that had me thinking this weekend. Is it okay to use some store-bought ingredients that are possible to make myself in order to simplify a recipe? I did that with the BBQ chicken pizza in which I used (gasp) bottled BBQ sauce and pre-made pizza dough. I have to admit, making the pizza this way went pretty quickly and was probably cheaper than if I’d had to make all the ingredients from scratch, although personally I felt a bit like a cheater.

Guilt aside, the pizza was awesome! The idea came after I found sliced yogurt cheese at the grocery store last week. It’s lactose-free and is a little tangy, not quite like sheep’s milk – more like string cheese. And the texture is similar to string cheese as well. Anyways, I’ve been experimenting with the yogurt cheese all week, eating it on a salad, mixed with scrambled eggs, and even on its own as a snack. Now was the time to really test the cheese and see what it was made of! You know, besides milk.

The pizza came together quickly. First, I marinated the chicken tenders in BBQ sauce and baked them in the oven (TIP: you could easily substitute any cut of leftover baked or grilled chicken, just toss it with a little BBQ sauce). I caramelized the shallots while the chicken was cooking and chopped the remaining ingredients. All that was left to do was dice the chicken, roll out the pizza dough, add the toppings and bake the whole thing.

My single complaint was that the dough was a bit soggy after it was cooked, something I blame simply on my using a disposable pizza pan rather than one of those oh-so-cool pizza stones (I would have bought one except I’d have no where to store it). And the yogurt cheese… yes, it was a success! Read more of this >>