Garnish – Rosemary and the Goat

Basil Pecan Pesto

My first harvest of basil.

Moved in, unpacked, art hung. I just finished two big projects I’ve been putting off for 4 months and that is reorganizing/labelling my craft closet and relabelling my 40+ spice jars so they all match. Next up the outside. We have a temporary outdoor kitchen started and enough that PapaG can get his home bbqing done but not what he has planned out in his head.

We have started a few plants and herbs in pots so far. A bay leaf tree that I paid a small fortune for and it’s dying or at least half of it is dying (as of today it is almost gone). The herbs on the other hand are going crazy. We have so much basil and every week I take a cutting a start rooting in water so we have even more. Don’t ask me what I’m going to do with all of this but for right now I made pesto.

I love making pecan (or walnut) pesto because it is a lot less expensive than pine nuts and I have about 20 pounds of pecans in my freezer that my sister sent me.

July 5, 2024 By Sherry

Beef/Veal/ Garnish/ Sauces

Cowboy Butter

Yee-haw! for cowboy butter.

For my birthday last November we went over to Columbus, Tx to a new restaurant, Magnolia Society (isn’t that a cool name) and even though I never get steak out because we do really good steak at home I ordered the steak with cowboy butter and balsamic demi glaze.

The steak was delicious. I can’t say I could identify what the cowboy butter was but put together the flavors were great and it made a very nice entree. I knew I’d be looking up a recipe for cowboy butter. I found two and ended up combining the two. One had horseradish and the other didn’t so I divided my mixture in half and added horseradish to one and not the other so I could decide which I really liked better; split decision because both were delicious on the steaks.

What is a compound butter you say. Well, it’s made by taking softened butter and adding herbs and seasonings. Then it gets formed into a log and refrigerator until firm and then it gets sliced and then tops your meat, fish, chicken, or vegetables. It will keep in the freezer for several months. Once we get into our new home with a nice big freezer I plan on keeping several different butters frozen so that will be ready to fancy up any entree I may prepare.

January 30, 2024 By Sherry

Appetizers/ ColdApp/ Garnish

Pickled Mustard Seed

You say, what am I to do with these pickled mustard seeds?

Don’t you love mustard? I do. At this moment I have nine different kinds of mustard in my refrigerator.

I love it on burgers, on bologna sandwiches with pile of chips on top and then crushed by the top slice of bread. I love mustard on French Fries (I’ve never eaten catsup on a fry.) and get this, I like a little dab of yellow mustard beside my white beans. A little chow chow, a little mustard and the beans are fantastic. And, you can’t forget about hot dogs and pretzels when it comes to a good smear of mustard. How about on top of some fried green tomatoes or a good grilled cheese sandwich with some bacon and pickled mustard seed on the inside. Let me know if you make them and if you do something really different with them.

This post is making my cheeks pucker just thinking about all the things I like mustard on. When my sister and I were kids we loved making mustard sandwiches with white bread and mustard; no meat, just mustard and bread. These mustard seeds can be used in salads, dressings or dips. These little orbs explode in your mouth.

March 26, 2018 By Sherry

Appetizers/ ColdApp/ Garnish

Smoked Cured Egg Yolk

A new culinary adventure!

Ok, so this isn’t much of an adventure but more of a “what else do I have to do with my time anyway” now that Thanksgiving is over and you are sick of looking at food.

My son, Scott, is always sending me some interesting food recipes to try; like his 24 hour No Knead Breadb or gravlax and now these cured egg yolks.

Like Scott, I didn’t want to waste a bunch of eggs the first time I tried making this yellow ball that looks like a dried apricot when you are done with it at the end of a long week. So at the end of this week, I had only one yolk to show for my 168 hours of watching and waiting and I grated it carefully not wanting to waste one speck of this yolk over some smoked salmon and sour cream that I put on top of my Herbed pizzelle. I can’t say that I thought it tasted any different than an egg but it was so pretty grated; like a big puffy pile of yellow.

Salt curing is the oldest method of food preservation that simply involves covering food with mixture of sugar and salt to draw out the moisture of the food. This method changes the egg yolk to a firm little flatten yolk that has the consistency of parmesan cheese; put it on your veggies (I tried some roasted asparagus), salads or spaghetti carbonara. Maybe put the grated yolk in your compound butter or wouldn’t it be wonderful on top of some avocado toast.

November 25, 2016 By Sherry

Garnish/ Salads/ Side dish/ Vegetables

Pickled Yellow Squash

Take advantage of your summer harvest.

I’ve been doing a lot of pickling lately; first my roasted yellow pickled beets and now this pickled yellow squash.

Even if you don’t have a garden you can take advantage of finding great deals on produce and then canning some to enjoy in the winter. I didn’t find a great deal at the farmer’s market; their yellow squash was $3.00/lb. I bought one pound of their squash and then went to my HEB and bought 6 lbs. at $.99/lb. Now that’s a deal.

My mother and dad both use to can things. It seemed like it was more my mother canning tomatoes and pickles from my dad’s garden and then after my dad retired they both tried their hand(s) at pickled okra, beets. When they moved over to Reelfoot Lake he even canned some fish he had caught then they would make fish cakes out of the canned fish. Now, I wasn’t too keen on trying that recipe but I’m sure if he made it, it was good.

I’ve canned some marmalade before and some fig jam and even some cognac raisins to serve with cheese. Oh, I forgot, one of my sister’s (Terry) best canned items is her chow chow. It is better than any chow chow you will ever find in a grocery store and when I can get tomatoes for 50 cents a lb. I make some. I have to go to Missouri to get tomatoes at that price.

August 11, 2016 By Sherry

Fish/Seafood/ Garnish/ Side dish

Preserved Lemons

These make me pucker just thinking about them.

I had a jar of preserved lemons that I bought several years ago in a mark down basket at a gourmet kitchen store. By the time I got around to cleaning my pantry out last week (I do this at least once a month) the jar of lemons looked like a jar of something not even resembling a lemon, they were dark gray and those definitely got thrown out.

We have a Meyer Lemon tree that was potted but then put in the ground. This is the third year for it to take up residence in our yard. Last year, some critter pulled all the lemons off and we ended up with 2 in the late Fall. Something happened this year, maybe the predators went to someone else’s yard because I had 16-18 beautiful, almost baseball size, Meyer lemons. So, since one can only drink so many lemon drop martinis, I decided to try to make preserved lemons and believe me, they were the easiest things I have ever made.

You say, “what am I going to do with preserved lemons since I don’t own a tagine and I don’t make Mediterranean food”. Well, you can make my Roasted Fingerling Potatoes with Preserved Lemons that I will be posting in two days (can’t give you lemons and then make you wait 6 days to post another recipe.

After a bit of research, I found quite a few things to do with preserved lemons — use them in salad dressings and sauces, in salsas and dips, pasta dishes, risotto, Tagines (there’s that word again), hummus, and just about anything that would benefit from a tart bite of a piece of lemon.

Of course when you take these out to use them you want to rinse off all the salt and tear out the inside of the lemon and throw this away as you are only using the rind.

The good thing about this recipe is you can make just one jar or whatever amount you want.

January 19, 2014 By Sherry

Appetizers/ ColdApp/ Garnish

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer Garnish

Rudolph the red nosed reindeer, had a very shiny nose……

What is Christmas in July anyway. I never really understood celebrating Christmas in July but I decided to show you this cute little garnish I use to make for all the Christmas parties I catered.

This is such a great tray garnish for your holidays. No instructions really needed but here’s how I would always make them.

Choose a perfectly “reindeer head” shaped pear. I always used the brown pears. Now for the ginger root, I would sort though the bin of ginger root pieces and find two that looked like reindeer antlers and then break off what I needed; why buy what you don’t need, right.

Decide how you want to situate the antler pieces and cut the bottom off in a slant to fit the shape of the pear where it will be sitting.

Cut the bottom of the pear off at a slant so it will sit with the nose end up. Put two toothpicks into each piece of ginger (that way they don’t swivel around) and insert into the back of the pear.

Cut radishes slices for the eyes. Attach them by using half a toothpick for each and insert that almost all the way into the pear leaving just enough sticking out of the radish to attach the raisin to.

July 17, 2013 By Sherry

Garnish/ Salads

Zucchini Bowl for Salad

Give any salad a new look.

Ok, I’m sitting around with nothing better to do than think of a way to use a leftover zucchini and then I happened upon a recipe; not really a recipe but more of a presentation idea I saw in Catering Source magazine. (Seems like there is a theme going here of me sitting around with nothing to do — after doing water aerobics a couple of times a week, gym a couple of times a week, craft circle working on doll houses, laundry, shopping etc. etc. I still do have a lot of time left over to ponder unimportant things like a vessel for a salad.)

I would really like a do-over with the last 20 years. Not that I would change one thing about raising my kids or any other thing I have done but I would like to have more time to travel and take cooking classes. What I always loved about catering was, of course cooking the food, but most of all I loved watching others enjoy what I prepared. Maybe I would be a food-truck owner. I love that idea and if I haven’t said it before, one weekend I want to go to Austin and check out at least 4-5 food trucks and sample their foods until I can’t hold another bite. So far, I have only been to the Flip Happy Crepe Truck and had a delicious Nutella and banana crepe which I may try to make sometime soon.

May 12, 2013 By Sherry

Appetizers/ Bread/ Cocktails/ ColdApp/ Garnish

Tomato Crostini with Whipped Feta & Aviation Cocktail for “SNS”

Sunday night supper and a cocktail.

There are two couples we usually go out with on Friday nights and on occasion we do dinner together on Sunday night. This has come to be called “Sunday Night Supper” and we all love to be invited to Sunday Night Supper because that means another night we do not have to cook. It’s fun to go to each other’s houses and see what’s cooking and how the table is going to be decorated.

I usually have confidence in what I’m cooking but never been that great at setting a great looking table. This past Sunday night we hosted SNS and even though there was just a little chill in the air and not a cold wintery night I decided to do a chowder for the main course.

Our evening started with cocktails out on the deck. I had spread one of my French square table toppers (that I had picked up in France) out on my teak table. Cocktail of the night was a once obscure drink, Aviation cocktail, made with Bombay gin, marachino cherry liquier (clear) and creme de violet (purple) and lemon juice and that was shook into a fantastic before dinner cocktail to go with the Tomato Crostini with Whipped Feta and my White Bean Hummus. For my salad dressing I used Ina Garten’s Champagne Vinaigrette and the salad consisted of baby arugula, baby spinach, some mixed greens and a whole carton of pea shoots. I also added avocado, some toasted walnuts and some paper thin julienned slices of jicama. I was able to buy all the greens in bulk so I could get a handful of this and that.

February 22, 2013 By Sherry

Appetizers/ ColdApp/ Garnish/ Jams & Marmalades/ Morning Foods

Tangerine Kumquat Marmalade

Beautiful color marmalade.

Delicious scones and great marmalade.

I decided to do the duck appetizer over the holidays and wanted to try Thomas Keller’s marmalade recipe. You’re have to wait until Christmas for the duck appetizer but for now, here’s the Tangerine Kumquat Marmalade recipe.

Recently I found some fantastic little (or big) Weck brand jars at one of our local gourmet grocery shops. I love them, they have rubber rings and instead of the normal screw tops, they have clips that hold down the lids; so retro looking. You can find these online at Amazon, Crate and Barrel, or to to www.weck.com to order them.

I have never been a toast and jelly kind of person. Strawberry jam, even though it isn’t a favorite of mine, is a must for freshly baked Cream Scones. All kids and adults probably love peanut butter and jelly. Not me. I’m strictly a peanut butter and bread type of person.

A couple of years ago I did make some wonderful peach preserves. Aren’t preserves so much better than jelly anyway; you get those bits of fruit and rind that give it so much more intense flavor. Some habanero peppers even got slipped into a few jars of the peach preserves for some extra kick and was fantastic on top of different types of cheeses.

I just had to try some scones with this jam but you can try it on any type of bread, put it on a cheese or even incorporate it into some recipe. A beautiful marmalade that can have so many uses.

If you are interested in the difference between a marmalade, preserves, jelly, jam, look here.

BLAST FROM THE PAST: If you haven’t already tried this Sugar Plum Cake you need to make it for the Christmas holidays. It’s the best and I’m sure your family will love it. If you make it and like it, please leave a comment at the bottom of that page.

December 21, 2012 By Sherry

ColdApp/ Garnish

Turnip Rose

O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?

(Juliet)

Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.

Romeo:
[Aside] Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?

Juliet:
‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy:
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? It is nor hand nor foot,
Nor arm nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O be some other name!
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose (turnip)
By any other word would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
and for thy name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself.

Thank you William. I always think of this when I do a turnip rose. Why? I don’t know. I just always think “a rose by any other name” and then realized where that line comes.

April 15, 2010 By Sherry

Appetizers/ ColdApp/ Dessert/ Garnish

Dried Pineapple Flowers

I love Martha! and this recipe is from her Cupcake cookbook.

I think Martha is one of those names that you just have to say the first name and everyone just knows who you are talking about.

I taught a technique class on cakes and cupcakes the other day at Williams Sonoma. It was a fun class to teach and I love sharing recipes and ideas with everyone that comes to our classes. Even though I didn’t do any cake decorating, we made a Whipped Cream Frosting that my mother use to make way back in the 50’s. I like playing with food and making garnishes and platter decorations and everything but have never had the patience to learn to decorate cakes. So, these little pineapple flowers really did the trick to finish off a cake I had made for the class.

I plan on making these little flowers to put on top of Hummingbird cupcakes for a party I’m catering before a Jimmy Buffet concert. I think these will look so tropical and will fit well with the theme of the party.

March 22, 2010 By Sherry

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