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As promised, here is the how-to for the perfect Caprese Salad.

Please don’t be deterred by the length of this recipe, it is truly easy to make.

Caprese Salad with Ovoline

A few things to keep in mind:

• Seasonality: Like most foods, this salad is only fantastic when the ingredients are at their best–in season and locally sourced.
• Quality: With a salad like this in which the flavors aren’t influenced by anything particularly strong, you need to use the best ingredients you can get.
• Simplicity: This isn’t a fancy salad, so don’t embellish–but I am not one to squelch creativity, so try it out if you feel you must.

Ingredients:

Tomato: We prefer heirlooms for their superior quality and interesting quirks, but just get good, ripe ones. We like those huge ones, and we also like the small Sun Gold or Cherry varieties.

Fresh Mozzarella: This is the cheese that comes in a milky liquid. Traditionally called Bufala (Buffalo) Mozzarella, most of what we can get in the USA is not that. True Bufala Mozzarella is made of buffalo milk. We generally get cow milk mozzarella in the states, so technically it should be called Fresh Mozzarella.

Get the size/shape that matches your tomatoes. The big egg-sized pieces, called Ovoline, go with the big tomatoes. To pair with the cherry tomatoes, try Perle, or Ciliegine, or Bocconcini.

Fresh Basil: That dried stuff will NOT suffice. If you can’t get fresh basil, don’t even bother making this salad. By the way, basil is one of the easiest herbs to grow in your backyard or windowsill garden.

Olive Oil: You will really taste the olive oil in this salad so use a quality one; our very favorite is from Napa Valley Olive Oil Manufacturing Company.

Balsamic vinegar: While I’ve learned that other caprese recipes don’t call for vinegar, we like the tang and look of it in our salad.

Salt & Pepper: Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper are mandatory.

Directions:

1. Remove any tomato stems. Wash and lightly pat dry the tomatoes. If you’re using the large tomatoes, use a tomato shark or a sharp knife to remove the top of the core. Cut into slices about 1/3 inch thick. If using the small tomatoes, leave whole.
2. Remove the cheese from the liquid and use a paper towel to lightly drain. Like the tomato, cut into slices about 1/3 inch thick. Leave the small mozzarella balls whole. The whole idea is to roughly match the size and shape of the tomato and the cheese.
3. Rinse and pat dry the basil. Stack the leaves on top of each other until you have a little pile. Roll the pile into a cylinder. Hold the cylinder closed while slicing cross-wise (aka chiffonade). Fluff the pile and volià–beautiful ribbons of basil.
4. Arrange the tomatoes on your serving platter. Use a dish that is flat, but with a lip so your dressing won’t spill out. We like to alternate different colored tomatoes.
5. At regular intervals, tuck the cheese slices in between the tomatoes.
6. Sprinkle your basil ribbons over the tomatoes and cheese.
7. Season with salt and pepper.
8. Drizzle with olive oil.
9. Drizzle lightly with balsamic vinegar.
10. Add more salt and pepper to taste.
11. If doing the small tomato/small mozzarella ball version (pictured below), just put all the ingredients in a bowl and toss gently.

Caprese Salad with Bocconcini

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I give credit to my dad for reintroducing me to the classic steakhouse salad: The Wedge Salad.

Growing up in Wisconsin, this salad was part of every Sizzler (considered fancy-schmancy at the time) dinner. Do you remember those salads too?

And I give credit to Tom for elevating that sad salad I remember, into a salad I now crave.

The key is, like with all food, the quality of the ingredients.

Get the freshest iceberg lettuce, the meatiest bacon (or pancetta) and the richest blue cheese dressing you can find (we love Sunshine Market’s housemade, or more widely available is Marie’s).

Simply cut the iceberg into wedges, fry the bacon, crumble and sprinkle upon–then spoon on the blue cheese dressing.

Sometimes we like to add sliced red onion. And sometimes even cucumber. Beyond that and you are getting into the new-fangled, rather than the classic, wedge salad.

This salad is best served with those other classics of the steakhouse: grilled ribeye, baked potato and maybe even creamed spinach.

Lately Samantha has taken quite an interest in cooking with her dad.

While she’s been into it since she’s been able to walk, suddenly cooking has become more important than even Dora the Explorer.

It makes me happy to see her take such an interest in cooking–as we are firm believers in food as an intrinsic, wonderful part of family life–and that she and Tom can share such a special connection.

So, in case you’d like it, below is the recipe for what they made here:

Mashed Cauliflower
1 head cauliflower
1/2 c milk (give-or-take)
4 TBL butter (give-or-take)
Salt & Pepper

1. Wash cauliflower, remove stem and any leaves and cut into roughly golf-ball sized pieces.
2. Put into pot, cover with water and bring to a simmer.
3. Cook until soft (a sharp knife will easily slide through).
4. Drain well. Very well.
5. Add about a 1/2 c milk and about 4 tablespoons of butter. Let the butter melt.
6. Add salt and pepper to taste.
7. Mash well.
8. Drain, a bit, if necessary.

Note: When mashing, cauliflower puts off a lot more liquid than potatoes do, so use a lot less milk than you would when making mashed potatoes. Feel free to use less or more milk than called for here in order to make your mashed cauliflower the consistency you want.

This dish is a great substitution for mashed potatoes for those on a low-carb diet.

Here in the Napa Valley, we drink a lot of wine.

But sometimes we just want a cocktail.

While Tom always sticks with the classics, I sometimes find a Gin & Tonic or a Crown & Seven just too boring. So, I’ve been through my Cosmopolitan phase, my Mango Mojito phase and my fruit Margarita phase. All are great cocktails–don’t get me wrong–but each can get, well, boring.

Enter the annual holiday fruit shipment from my folks.

Every December, they mail a big box of luscious, top-quality citrus fruits from a specialty grower out of Texas. The oranges glisten, the Ruby Red grapefruits titillate.

Two years ago, we had an epiphany and juiced some of the grapefruits. Not for breakfast mind you, but rather for use in making cocktails.

But here I must interject that I’ve never been a fan of the grapefruit. And I still am not. Except for these grapefruits. Especially this grapefruit juice in cocktails.

Well, this past weekend when I walked out to the front porch and spied the tell-tale holiday gift box, we grabbed the vodka, the cocktail shaker and the martini glasses.

While a cocktail made from grapefruit juice and vodka is called a Greyhound and is typically served on the rocks in a collins glass–we happen to have fancy new Riedel martini glasses we haven’t yet used much, so we’ve been serving them up this year. I am not certain this should still be called a Greyhound. If any of you cocktail purists would like to comment, that space is below.

So by the name of Greyhound or just Vodka & Grapefruit, this is the best holiday cocktail. Ever.

To get started, take a ripe Ruby Red grapefruit (you can try that pale yellow variety that you’ll find year-round in the grocery store, but it won’t be as good) and juice it.

If you’ve never juiced a fruit by hand before, it’s easy. Just cut it in half, then squeeze each half over a strainer propped across a bowl.

Tom likes to use a reamer. It is just an inexpensive little wooden gadget available in most any kitchen store.

Be sure to squeeze over the strainer so you don’t get seeds or pulp in your juice. You can run the squeezed-juice through the stainer a second time if need be.

Fill your cocktail shaker with ice. Pour in one shot of vodka* to four parts juice (you’ll acheive this ratio, roughly, with the juice from one large fruit).

Shake well. Strain into your martini glass. Makes one cocktail.

Lift glass to mouth, with pinky finger extended.

Happy Holiday Cocktailing…

Cheers!

*When mixing vodka with such a flavorful juice as this, you don’t need to use those super-expensive vodkas–something mid-range like Skyy works fine. 

“If more of us valued cheer, food and song above hoarded gold–it would be a merrier world.”  ~J.R. Tolkein

May your holiday and the year to come be merry and bright!

So that NaBloPoMo thing last month plum tuckered me out.

The theme. The daily.

It’s actually still a bit challenging changing gears and writing about a subject other than a winery (or as it became, anything even remotely associated with a winery).

So I’ve decided to write about something that has nothing to do with a winery. And actually I am not even going to write much, but rather post a video on how to dice an onion. And my very first video post at that!

A kitchen basic? Yes.

Something I still have to ask “Tom, now how do I do this again”? Yes.

Every. Single. Time.