*This post is sponsored by La Crema Wines. All opinions here are my own. You can find the companion recipes over on the La Crema blog. 

As soon as the first hint of spring arrives, I start thinking about rosé wine. Perhaps I’m just more susceptible to social trends and marketing than I think I am, but somehow, that first chilled glass of rosé, preferably consumed on a terrace on a sunny but cool evening, has come to embody the fact that summer is coming. In March and April I test the waters with a glass here and there, usually consumed indoors while looking longingly at the outdoors, wishing spring would hurry up and get here. And then May hits, and it’s all rosé all the time (#roséallday, people).

In celebration of the start of rosé season, I’ve put together a pairing dinner using La Crema’s two rosé wines – the Monterey Pinot Noir Rosé and the Saralee’s Vineyard Pinot Noir Rosé. In the past my dinner series collaboration with La Crema has taken us to Japan for Izakaya, Latin America for a spicy Thanksgiving menu, and Italy for a summery seafood feast. Now, for spring and for rosé, we’re going to France, where effortless appetizers and simple but elegant entrées are king. And also there’s a lot of pink wine.

There are four courses in this menu. First, a Spring Crudité Platter. If you are thinking to yourself, “how boring,” bear with me a moment. This is not a platter of dry baby carrots and too-thick ranch dressing sitting, ignored, in a corner. This is a vibrant, effortless display of spring’s best vegetables. Blanched asparagus, snap peas, tender spring carrots, bitter endive, spicy radish slices, and sweet pepper… all served with an addictive, pale green herb aioli. Crudité platters can be very classy.

Second, a simple and savory Goat Cheese Tart with Peas and Prosciutto. It’s similar to a quiche, but thinner and denser. It’s also so, so good. Even if you’re not tackling the whole French Rosé Dinner menu, give this goat cheese tart a try. It’s  a great multipurpose recipe to have in your cooking arsenal, and you can vary the vegetables with the season. Equally good warm or cold, a thin slice is a perfect appetizer for dinner, while a big slice makes a filling breakfast.

The main course is a lovely Baked Halibut Provençal – halibut marinated in lemon and olive oil and served over a rich tomato, olive, and caper sauce. It’s inspired by the time I spent in Provence years ago, on my first vacation with Trevor. We rented an apartment at the top of a hill in Cassis and spent a week there. It was a tiny little place with an expansive patio, and every day after beach hopping we would hike up the hundreds of dusty stone steps with bags of vegetables from the market hanging on our shoulders. We were using most of our disposable income on the apartment so we ate simply – ratatouille and grilled chicken. This recipe takes it’s cues from those meals. A simple but perfectly cooked protein accompanied by a sauce full of seasonal vegetables and herbs.

And to finish off this lovely French dinner, a cake! Or, mini Strawberries and Cream Chiffon Cakes, to be precise. I wanted to make a French version of strawberry shortcake, one of my favorite spring desserts. I swapped the buttery shortcakes for a light and airy chiffon cake, and layered the chiffon cake with strawberries and whipped cream. A few more tweaks upped the elegance – there’s rosé in the cake batter and mint and tarragon in the strawberries.

This cake was everything I was hoping it would be. I was worried that it would be worse than your standard strawberry shortcake. Strawberry shortcake is, after all, pretty difficult to improve upon. But the chiffon cake – soft and airy – was the perfect thing for soaking up all the delicious strawberry juices. The rosé wine flavor was just barely present in the cake, and you could taste the mint and tarragon in the strawberries, too. It was the kind of dessert that I thought about multiple times while sitting at work. That’s the surest sign of a win, in my book.

You can find the recipes for the first three courses on the La Crema blog: Spring Crudité Platter, Goat Cheese Tart with Peas and Prosciutto and Baked Halibut Provençal. The Strawberries and Cream Chiffon Cake recipe is below!

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Strawberries and Cream Chiffon Cakes

A French take on Strawberry Shortcake, using light and airy chiffon cake as the base. The chiffon cake has rose wine whipped into the batter for a hint of flavor, and the strawberries are macerated with fresh tarragon and mint.

Chiffon cake recipe adapted from the Joy of Cooking.

• Author: Katie at the Kitchen Door
• Yield: 6
• Category: Dessert

Ingredients

For the cake:

• 2 1/4 cups sifted cake flour
• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 1 TBS baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 5 egg yolks
• 3/4 cup rosé wine
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil or canola oil
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 7 egg whites
• 1/4 tsp cream of tartar

For the filling:

• 2 lb. strawberries, washed, hulled, and thinly sliced
• 1/3 cup plus 1/4 cup sugar, divided
• 2 TBS minced fresh tarragon leaves
• 2 TBS minced fresh mint leaves
• 3 cups heavy cream
• 2 tsp vanilla

Instructions

1. For the cake: Preheat the oven to 325°F. Spray an 11×17 inch sheet pan lightly with cooking spray, then line with a piece of parchment paper. Set the prepared pan aside.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the cake flour, sugar, baking powder and salt until evenly combined. Now add the wet ingredients – the egg yolks, wine, canola oil, and vanilla and beat thoroughly, until a smooth batter is formed. Set this batter aside.
3. In a large, clean bowl, begin beating the egg whites on high speed (or vigorously by hand). After about 30 seconds, stop and add the cream of tartar, then continue beating. Beat until the egg whites are very stiff and glossy – they should completely hold their shape. Add a third of the beaten egg whites to the bowl with the batter and gently fold with a spatula until the two mixtures are evenly combined. Now add the remaining egg whites and fold in until evenly combined. Scrape the batter into the prepared sheet pan and use a spatula to spread evenly. Bake until the top of the cake springs back lightly when pressed, about 20 minutes. Run a knife along the edges of the pan to release the cake. Let cool to room temperature, then invert the cake on a piece of aluminum foil and peel off the parchment paper. Set the cake aside or refrigerate until ready to use.
4. For the filling: Place the sliced strawberries in a large bowl with 1/3 cup of sugar and the minced mint and tarragon leaves. Stir to coat the berries with sugar. Set aside and let macerate for at least 15 minutes. You can also cover the berries and let them sit in the fridge for up to 24 hours.
5. When you are ready to assemble and serve the cakes, beat the heavy cream on high with the remaining 1/4 cup sugar until it is whipped enough to hold it’s shape. Avoid over-beating as it will take on a butter-like consistency. Stir in the vanilla.
6. Cut the cake into 12 squares that are approximately 4 inches wide. For each cake, place one cake square on a plate. Cover with 2 or 3 large spoonfuls of strawberries and their juice, arranging neatly. Spread some whipped cream on top, then repeat the layers – cake, strawberries, whipped cream – once more. Garnish with a strawberry. Serve immediately.

The post French Spring Dinner with La Crema: Strawberries and Cream Chiffon Cakes appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

I could not be more ready for the weekend. I had one too many 7am meetings this week, each one followed by long days working frantically toward a major deadline Thursday afternoon. The minute the deadline passed, I felt a wave of exhaustion wash over me. I was spent. But now the weekend has arrived and I have two full days to sleep in, not think about insurance, and enjoy the beautiful weather we’re supposed to have. We’re going to head out to the garden to check for tomatoes and squash and blueberries, try and catch a showing of Chef, and hopefully head up to Maine to look for chanterelles with Trevor’s uncle.

One thing that helped me keep my head up during this hectic week was coming home to these delicious basil panna cottas in the fridge – I won’t lie, I had a few bites every night this week. When it comes to basil, my eyes are often bigger than my stomach. I find the scent of basil truly intoxicating, and am seemingly unable to walk by a box in the store or a patch in the garden without taking some home. But its shelf life is shorter than I think, and more often than not I use up a little right away and then end up with a bunch of slimy black leaves a week later, which feels like such a terrible waste. One solution is to mix up and freeze a big batch of pesto, but after a while, as delicious as pesto is, it feels boring.

On the ride home from our garden the other day, a bag of freshly picked basil sitting in my lap, I tried to think of things other than pesto that I might make to use up leaves on their last leg. When I got to basil ice cream, I moved backwards a few steps to basil-infused heavy cream, and then jumped forward again to settle on basil panna cotta. Since I had a few overly ripe apricots in the fridge that needed to be used up as well, I decided on rosé-poached apricots as a topping. I read up on my panna cotta theory in The Best International Recipe (a great resource for knowing how and why recipes work), then changed things up a little, and the result was sublime. Not too sweet, extremely light and smooth, and with delicate, floral flavors, it tasted like a restaurant quality dessert but was extremely simple to execute. It might be my new dinner party go to. If you also have an abundance of basil and quickly ripening stone-fruit sitting on your counter (’tis the season!) I encourage you to give this recipe a go – you won’t be disappointed, and you’ll have spared yourself the sadness of wasted produce.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

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Basil Panna Cotta with Rosé-Poached Apricots

Serves 4.

• 1 1/2 c. heavy cream
• 1/2 c. basil leaves, washed and dried
• 1 c. sugar, divided
• 1/2 vanilla bean
• 1/2 c. milk
• 1 1/2 tsp gelatin
• 3/4 c. rosé wine
• 4 fresh apricots, halved and pits removed

1. Add the heavy cream, basil, and 1/4 cup of the sugar to a small saucepan. Split the vanilla bean lengthwise and scrape the seeds out into the cream with a small spoon, then add the vanilla bean pod to the cream as well. Heat the cream over medium heat, stirring gently to dissolve the sugar, until the cream just comes to a simmer. Remove from the heat and let sit for 15 minutes, then strain the cream through a fine mesh strainer into a bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and chill until cold, at least 30 minutes. Discard the basil.
2. Add the milk to a small saucepan and sprinkle the gelatin over the top of the milk. Stir gently to combine. Let the gelatin sit for 10 minutes to hydrate, then heat over medium-low heat just until the gelatin dissolves, which should take about 90 seconds to 2 minutes. Remove from the heat, whisk to combine, then pour into the chilled basil-infused cream. Whisk the mixture for 1 minute to fullly combine and to begin to chill the gelatin, then divide the mixture between four ramekins or glasses, cover each with plastic wrap, and chill until firm, at least two hours.
3. For the apricots: add the remaining 3/4 c. of sugar and the rosé to a small saucepan. Bring to a simmer, then gently place the apricot halves into the pot, submerging in the simmering liquid. Let simmer until soft, about 3-4 minutes, then remove with a slotted spoon to a bowl. Continue simmering the liquid until it is reduced by half and slightly syrupy, about 10-15 minutes. Remove from heat and pour over the apricots. Cover the apricots and syrup and chill until cold.
4. Serve each panna cotta with one or two apricot halves and a few spoonfuls of syrup poured over the top. Serve cold.

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Recently, a good friend of mine sent me an email asking for a few recipes she could use for a dinner party she was hosting with friends.  She wanted two to three recipes, preferably with a theme, and easy enough to prepare with friends on the spot.  She and her friends wanted to use the party partially as a way to learn to cook better, as well as just a chance to catch up and eat good food.  A simple enough plan.

Two catches – one, she’s one of the least kitchen-savvy people I know – cooking is just not really in her interest set.  (Illustration: she once asked me if sauteeing onions in olive oil was one of those fussy things that only I did while we were making soup.)  Two, she’s a health nut.  Like, super fit, eats primarily superfoods, drinks only green tea and water, will only eat one bite of dessert ever kind of healthy.  Actually, I’m a little bit jealous of her self-control and love for vegetables – if I loved leafy greens like she does, I’d probably be 3 times as energetic as I am now.  Anyway, knowing that nothing could be too fancy and that I couldn’t sneak any cheese or butter or cream or bacon (all my favorite ingredients, noooooo!)  into the meal made it a bit more challenging to come up with recipes for her.

As I thought about it, I realized that this was the perfect situation for a Greatist post.  Greatist is all about trying to make making healthy choices easier and more fun, and dinner parties are pretty fun, right?  I imagine there are plenty of people out there looking for simple, healthy recipes to use when entertaining that will still impress their friends.  So, as I was sending recipes back to my friend, Greatist Dinner Party was born.

For this first dinner party, I chose Middle Eastern recipes as the theme, partly because many Middle Eastern recipes manage to pack tons of flavor into a dish with very little fat – that’s the beauty of herbs and spices!  Also, the recipes I chose – baked chickpea burgers with tzatziki, traditional tabbouleh, and strawberry-rosewater-buttermilk lassis – are all dishes that are easy to make ahead and stash in the fridge until go-time.  In terms of health, it’s a super balanced meal – tons of herbs and veggies, protein from the chickpeas and the Greek yogurt, a manageable amount of carbs from the tabbouleh and pita/burger bun, and fruit and cultured dairy from the lassis.  Even though I wasn’t having friends over, I prepared everything as if I was and sat down to a very delicious lunch Sunday afternoon, so I can attest to the fact that this menu is easy and relatively quick to prepare and super, super delicious.  My favorites were the chickpea burgers (so flavorful, and baked to boot!) and the tzatziki (the garlic really kicks it up a notch).  Got leftovers?  Crumble a chickpea burger into a tupperware with leftover tabbouleh and drizzle with tzatziki and you’ll have a filling to-go lunch that will give you something to look forward to all morning.

Head on over to Greatist for the chickpea burger recipe, and see below for all the yummy accompaniments, as well as a little schedule I put together if you need help planning out your prep time!

P.S. My friend reported back that the dinner party was a success – they made and enjoyed all of the recipes.  So maybe she’s not as kitchen-impaired as I thought :-)  Next time, you’re getting a challenge, girl.  xo.

Greatist Dinner Party – Middle Eastern

Dinner party plan of attack (I think I’ve been fairly generous with the time you will need as a single person preparing the meal – with friends, you could easily divide and conquer and take less than an hour overall.  As far as cooking implements, you will need – 1 cutting board, 1 knife, blender, food processor, 1 saute pan, 2 large bowls, fine-mesh colander, 2 medium bowls, utensils/measuring implements):

• 5:00 – peel, chop and salt cucumbers, leave to drain in colander.
• 5:05 – prepare tabbouleh ingredients: slice/chop/mince tomatoes, scallions, parsley, mint, mix together with spices, lemon juice, and olive oil.  Set aside in a large bowl.
• 5:20 – make smoothies: wash, hull, and quarter strawberries, blend with other ingredients, and refrigerate until ready to serve.
• 5:30 – remove cucumbers from colander, pat dry, and add to food processor with dill, garlic, and lemon juice.  Process until smooth, mix with yogurt, season to taste, cover, and refrigerate until ready to serve.
• 5:40 – rinse bulghur in colander, let drain 5 minutes, fluff with fork, then add to other tabbouleh ingredients.  Mix together, cover, and refrigerate until ready to serve.
• 5:45 – preheat oven.
• 5:50 – clean up break: wash blender, colander, and various utensils/measuring items.  Rinse out food processor.  Rinse off cutting board and knife.
• 6:00 – peel and chop onion.  Saute in pan with olive oil for 5 minutes, then place in large bowl.
• 6:10 – prepare chickpea burgers: peel and chop carrot, peel garlic, pulse remaining ingredients in food processor.  Mix with breadcrumbs and spices.  Prepare baking sheet, form into patties, brush with olive oil.
• 6:30 – cook chickpea burgers.  While waiting, clean up remaining dishes, wipe down counters.
• 6:45 – remove other items from fridge.  Toast hamburger buns.
• 6:50 – dinner is ready!

Traditional Tabbouleh

I’ve shared a tabbouleh recipe before (actually, it was another Greatist post…), but it was a souped-up all-in-one version with lentils and feta cheese to make it a complete meal on it’s own.  This version is a more traditional version, heavy on the herbs with just a bit of bulghur wheat – although I chose to use a bit more than David recommends to make it a more substantial salad.

Adapted from David Leibowitz.  Serves 4 as a side.

• 1/4 c. bulghur wheat
• 20 grape tomatoes, finely diced
• 4 scallions, roots and dark green tips removed, thinly sliced
• large bunch parsley – about 3 c. packed leaves
• 20 large stalks of mint – about 3/4 c. packed leaves
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground allspice
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• 1/4 c. olive oil
• kosher salt, to taste

1. Wash herbs, shake or spin dry, and remove leaves from stalks, leaving as little stalk as possible attached to leave.  Discard stalks.  Gather herbs in a bunch and finely slice into thin slivers, working with a handful at a time.  Add to a large bowl, along with diced tomatoes and sliced scallions.
2. Place bulghur wheat in a fine-mesh colander and rinse under cold water for about 1 minutes.  Let drain over a bowl for 5 minutes, then fluff with a fork.  Sprinkle bulghur wheat over salad.  Stir in cinnamon, allspice, lemon juice, and olive oil and check for seasoning.  Salt to taste.  Refrigerate until serving.

Tzatziki

This is hands-down the best tzatziki I’ve ever tried.  Usually, I go the lazy route and just toss some cucumbers and a bit of dill into a bowl of yogurt, but the slight extra effort required for this recipe is 100% worth it – the finely blended garlic, lemon juice, dill, cucumber, and salt makes this a totally addictive and healthy dip.

Recipe adapted from Kalyn’s Kitchen.  Makes about 1 cup.

• 1/2 small cucumber, peeled, and seeds scooped out of center with a spoon
• kosher salt, to taste
• 1/4 c. dill fronds, thick part of stems removed
• 1 garlic clove
• 1 c. plain Greek yogurt
• 2 tsp. lemon juice
• black pepper, to taste

1. Finely chop cucumber, and place in colander over bowl.  Sprinkle with a small amount of salt, and let sit for half an hour.  After half an hour, pat cucumber dry with a paper towel, and add to food processor with dill, garlic, lemon juice, and a bit of black pepper.  Process until smooth, then stir into yogurt.  Season to taste with salt, and additional pepper if needed.  Refrigerate until serving.  Will keep in fridge for a few days.

Strawberry and Rosewater Lassis

Adapted from Pairs Well With Food.  Serves 4.

• 1 1/2 lbs fresh strawberries, hulled and quartered
• 1 1/2 c. cold buttermilk
• 3-4 TBS honey, depending on sweetness of berries
• 1 tsp ground cardamom
• 1 1/2 tsp rosewater
• 1/2 c. ice
• chopped pistachios for garnish (optional)

1. Add all ingredients to a blender and blend until smooth and frothy.  Taste for sweetness and add more honey if necessary.  Serve cold, with chopped pistachios if desired.

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