Arugula greens with pears and Blue Cheese Vinaigrette

I had a craving for a decent, simple salad the other day, and we made something a little like this at work, so I figured i'd make it on here.

Ingredients for the dressing:
1 1/2 cup Olive oil
1/2 cup white wine vinegar
1/4 cup crumbled blue cheese
1/4 cup cream
Salt and White pepper to taste










First, make the vinaigrette. Combine the vinegar and salt; whip until the salt has dissolved.









































Now, combine the oil into the vinegar, whipping all the time to blend.

























Season with the white pepper to taste, and this is what it should look like. This is a perfect vinaigrette dressing to use as well.

Also, if you think the flavor of the olive oil is too strong, you can use extra light olive oil, which has a more subtle flavor.









To make it a blue cheese vinaigrette, crumble up the blue cheese, combine it with the cream and blend.











You can do this by hand with a whip, but it's hard because the blue cheese is pretty tough.













Blend until smooth, and add it to the vinaigrette.













And there's the blue cheese vinaigrette.













You can cut up the pear pretty much any way you want, and if the skin is soft enough, you can add it into the salad, or slice it off if you prefer.

I just cut the pear in half, then half again, and so on, then cut out the tough part in the middle with the seeds.







Take a little handful of the arugula for each plate, a few pear slices, drizzle with the dressing and serve.

Puree of white bean soup

I learned how to make puree soups and cream soups, so i'll begin with puree soup.



You will need:
2 cups white beans (Raw beans soaked overnight)
1/2 cup canned diced tomato
1/2 cup onion, small dice
Clove garlic, minced
Clarified butter
Jalapeno pepper, minced
3 1/2 cups chicken stock (not pictured, sorry)
Seasonings:
Pinch ground cumin
Pinch ground coriander
pinch cayenne pepper
Bay leaf
Garnish:
Avocado, large dice
Roma tomato, concasse (remember?)
Fresh cilantro, minced

Melt the clarified butter . . .













Chop the onion and sweat it in the clarified butter with the garlic.



























Do not brown! I browned a little too much here, so don't do that! The onion and garlic needs to soften, so on low heat, just lightly saute, stirring occasionally.










When the onions are soft, add the chicken stock, diced tomato, seasonings, and minced jalapeno.

Make sure you wash your hands throughly after you handle the jalapeno. If you don't, and you touch your eyes or nose, they will burn.








Bring up to a boil and down to a simmer.



























Simmer for 45 minutes to an hour, or until the beans are cooked. It will reduce a little, so if you want, you can add more chicken stock. If the beans aren't covered with liquid, definitely add stock.

You want to have enough liquid so that the beans are well covered.






In the meantime; the garnish.

Slice an avocado in half, and take out the seed.











You can slice it in the skin, which makes it really easy to cut up.












Mix it with the roma tomato concasse.













Mince the cilantro.



























Combine it all together with salt and pepper to taste.













Back to the soup:

When the beans are soft, the soup is done.













Separate the beans and the broth in a colander, and run the solids through a food processor, food mill or immersion blender.

























You want to mix it until smooth and consistent; no big chunks.












Combine it with the broth you strained off and warm to serve.












I surrounded the avocado tomato salsa with some sour cream.

Tomato concassé

Follow-up/Q&A from the last post:

Crystal: You can just leave out the pig's feet, it would change the flavor a little, but not too much. The pig's feet are there because you want to get the collagen in the sauce. It really helps in making it thicker, and making it bind a bit more.

Also, you could eliminate the bacon from the beginning and use vegetable stock instead of chicken stock if you want to go vegetarian.

Max: You can find chicken and beef stock in every store, and that's what I’m using. Most of the time it comes in cans, but you can also find it in cardboard containers. I don't really have time to make my own stock, but I do have a whole chicken in my freezer, so maybe one of these days I will, and I’ll demo it too!!

If you don't want to buy stock, you can buy chicken base, which is chicken stock reduced down to about 5% it's original volume. With this stuff, you have to add water to reconstitute it. Or, if you live in the woods (Max lives in Alaska, so sometimes I wonder if he has to kill his own food) you could kill a chicken, grow some onions, celery and carrots and make it all yourself.

Now, on to tomato concassé.
Before I start, I want to tell everyone that (if you don't already know) that summer is the best time for tomatoes. Right now in the winter they are very hard and their flavor just is not as good as it could be.

Also, different tomatoes have different purposes. Roma tomatoes are best for this task (boiling, shocking, and chopping) because their flesh is very firm. Grape/cherry tomatoes are best for salad garnish because they are great, juicy little morsels. Beefsteak/hothouse tomatoes are best for slicing because the flesh is very loose and would really fall apart for this kind of task. They are also very seed heavy.

For a tomato sauce, roma tomatoes are best because the flesh gives you the best firmness to keep the sauce thick.


You will need a paring knife, a large pot to boil water in, and a large bowl to keep cold water in.













So, put the water on to boil.













While you're waiting for it to boil, take the tomato and score the bottom with an 'x' that is a half inch long.























































Now, put them in the boiling water. You want a large pot for this because you want to make sure the water is boiling. If the pot is small, the tomatoes will cool the water too much and they won't boil.

You want to keep these in the water for less than a minute, depending on how hard the tomato is.

You'll know they're ready when the skin starts to peel off.




Now, shock the tomatoes; take them out of the boiling water and put them directly in the coldest water you can find. You're supposed to use ice water, but I don't have an ice maker, and the tap water is really cold at my apartment, so I was successful with this.

The reason you do this is to prevent the flesh of the tomato from cooking. You don't want to boil the tomatoes, you just want to loosen the skin, so putting them in the cold water stops them from cooking.

You want to make sure the tomatoes are cold all the way through.


Now, the skin should very easily peel right off the tomatoes.










































Also, core the tomato.



























Now, cut it in half lengthwise.


























Now, pull the seeds and the gooey parts out. I found that it's really easy to get the seeds out if you have the tomato in the cold water; the seeds are attracted to water.














Once you've pulled all the seeds out, roughly chop the tomato.









































Just cut it up one way, turn it and cut it up the other way.



















































































When you're in the store, and you see canned, diced tomatoes, this is what you're getting. So there!