Fresh Tart

I'll confess, I meant to get this recipe to you before New Year's Eve. But in the crush of the holidays, and illness, it did not happen and...well, Happy New Year? The good news is that New Year's Eve is not the only winter night to invite friends for dinner, and this easy appetizer is meant to share with friends.

This is a pretty old school recipe at this point, given roasted garlic's heyday (perhaps even Kardashian-level overexposure?) around the turn of this century. I think it's fair to say that we all know that garlic becomes gorgeously sweet and spreadable when roasted; but add fresh herbs, tangy cheese, and a splash of broth and you create a rich swiping sauce that elevates the whole to party food that stands the test of time.

I first copied this recipe from Bon Appetit magazine, onto a recipe card, as a newlywed party thrower and it quickly became a much-passed-around favorite. Forgive me the nostalgia of feeling like my mom, circa 1972, sharing her recipe for her creamy dried beef dip. Except that my mom had way cool hostess kimonos and I tend to entertain in jeans. (I definitely need a hostess kimono...)

You can roast the garlic ahead by a couple of hours and hold it at room temperature. Then, when your guests threaten imminent arrival, crumble on the cheese and set it in the oven to melt. You'll want to serve this warm, with good bread, and a glass of bubbles.

Recipe for Baked Garlic with Rosemary & Blue Cheese at TC Taste/Minnesota Monthly Magazine.

While you're busy baking holiday sweets, don't forget a nod to the savory. Homemade crackers are a thousand times tastier than their boxed counterparts (just like cookies!) and are a breeze to whip up. The cheesy, nutty crunch of these almond-meal cheese crackers needs no topping, just a measure of discipline to not inhale a panful in one serving. A salty corner here, a browned edge there, and snip, snap, gone.

This recipe is a terrific base recipe, delicious as is as well as highly customizable. The best part of cooking is making a dish your own, right? If you're new to cooking, it's important to follow recipes exactly while you get a feel for how things work. But as you taste and learn and understand the basic science, I'm all for playing around with seasonings, experimenting, whether to use the ingredients you happen to have on hand or to try something completely new. I happened to be feeling nostalgic about the rosemary in my fridge, as it's the last taste of my garden, so I added minced rosemary - and several grinds of black pepper - to the mix.

Lovely.

Recipe for gluten-free/grain-free Cheese Crackers with Rosemary & Black Pepper at TC Taste/Minnesota Monthly Magazine.

As we head into holiday entertaining and craziness, don't forget about popcorn! I am NOT talking about microwave popcorn, I'm talking about the real deal, popped in a pan, which takes about 5 minutes to make and tastes 50 million times - maybe 100 million times - better. When you're done, you have a bowlful of fragrant crunchiness ready to be tarted up for a party (or plopped in front of the TV with a glass of wine aka dinner).

When I was a kid, we were butter-and-salt purists, preferring plenty of both. Don't get me wrong - browned butter with sea salt to this day makes up 80% of my popcorn consumption. I make it for my son's friends, I set it out at our pool for swim parties, I make a batch after a night out with the girls. But it's great fun, and almost as easy, to play around a bit with creative flavor combinations, which are both addictive and gorgeous, and tend to blow guests away for very little effort.

Recipe(s) for Pumpkin Seed/Brown Butter/Crispy Sage, Bacon/Caraway Seed/Bay Leaf, and Curry Powder/Honey/Lime Zest popcorn (and other ideas too) at TC Taste/Minnesota Monthly Magazine.

Do you invite people to your home for dinner or do you break into a January-in-Minnesota sweat at the thought? I love eating in restaurants, but the nights spent with friends and family in our home, or in theirs, are the best of all. When I was a newlywed, I was so excited to be a grown up that I almost killed myself preparing elaborate dinner parties in tiny kitchens. I don't regret those experiences one bit, but these busy days, I prefer to keep it simple. I think my guests have more fun and I know that I do.

Especially when the dinner party is spontaneous! I just love a last-minute dinner party, when guests pitch in with the chopping, and setting the table, and we all sit around chatting and relaxed. Hear this Minnesotans - there is no need for fancy appetizers before dinner! Sometimes I think the pressure of fussy appetizers kills a party more than the dinner itself. Pop some bubbles and set out some salty nuts, raw vegetables, and a slab of good butter. Delicious. Done.

Or make frico! If you keep a block of Parmesan cheese in your fridge, you're ready to impress in mere minutes. Frico is basically fried grated cheese, toasted in a pan to a crisp wafer of whoa, ready in five minutes or less. Slide the golden crunchy cheese onto a plate and let your guests break off pieces to devour between sips of wine.

It's lovely to fry a bit of sage in the pan before sprinkling in the cheese. Ditto stirring around a bit of garlic. This Melissa Clark version from the New York Times jumped right out at me a couple of weeks ago. Isn't the scorched zucchini pretty? It's also a nice foil for the richness of all that toasted cheese. Clark's introduction didn't put me off either: WHY there is no cult devoted to crunchy fried cheese is beyond me. It’s as rich as bacon or pork belly, as crisp as chicken wings, and as tempting as a foie gras doughnut.

I couldn't agree more!

Recipe for Melissa Clark's Zucchini Frico at TC Taste/Minnesota Monthly Magazine.

Along with my father-in-law's famously fabulous crab cakes, my other favorite is Andrew Zimmern's version, via our mutual friend Carol Mack. Both recipes have in common a very, very small amount of breading. Crab cakes should be mostly crab! Really, really good lump crab, in fact.

Recipe for Baltimore-Style Crab Cakes at Andrew Zimmern's Kitchen Adventures/Food & Wine Magazine.

Like some sort of mad fryentist, give me a pan of hot oil and I will riff on and on an on... See below - Fried Cheese Curds - for what was really Part II of my latest fry tear (and a delicious one at that).

Part I began last Friday night, when my cousin Kelly and her husband Jomo came for dinner, and I spied leftover risotto in the cooler. The vision of arancini leapt into my head and while I really didn't have time to make them, I did anyhow, and gosh were we glad that I did. Risotto is lovely fried (le duh), especially with a little square of mozzarella cheese pressed into the middle (le duh), and just beautiful to snack on with a glass of prosecco.

In fact, I would happily have just that for dinner, with sliced tomatoes and a light salad to finish.

I made mine gluten-free by using Udi's white bread ground into bread crumbs in the food processor. Stir some of the bread crumbs into cold, leftover risotto to hold things together a bit, then roll risotto into 3/4-inch (or smaller; small is better, in this rare case) balls. Press a small cube of mozzarella into the center of the ball (optional), then roll the ball in more bread crumbs, pressing the crumbs into the risotto as you go. You want a sturdy coating to hold the filling in place as the balls fry.

Use peanut oil or safflower oil to fry them (not canola which tastes disgusting when heated to high heat). Serve hot.

You probably don't want to know this, but it's seriously easy to make fried cheese curds at home. In fact, in the time you spend in line at the Minnesota State Fair, sweating your brains out while standing on a smushed-curd covered floor, you could have whipped up a batch at home and EATEN it. Kablam!

So in case you couldn't hack the line, or your kids got too cranky before the cheese-curd portion of the day, I offer this fast tempura version for your kitchen. A combination of rice flour and corn starch yields a shatteringly crisp exterior (that just happens to be naturally gluten-free).

Assuage fried-food guilt by dipping a few sliced vegetables in the batter too. I had fried mushrooms for breakfast just this morning, in fact, as a quick test to make sure that I could recommend the batter for vegetables...all good. I suspect strips of bell pepper, zucchini, onions (of course), dill pickles, or asparagus would all work beautifully. I guarantee that little balls of leftover risotto and mashed potatoes are crispy-gooey fabulous. (Breakfast of champions for me today, oy...)

Recipe for Fried Cheese Curds at TC Taste/Minnesota Monthly Magazine.

Let's call it summer and make plans to eat outside, preferably as often as possible. Dinner al fresco pretty much anywhere feels special, but dinner on a farm is particularly divine for us city dwellers, away from cubicles and concrete, with time to learn about, discuss, and savor food prepared at its source.

In fact, one of the best meals I enjoyed in all of 2011 was an Outstanding in the Field (OITF) dinner, at Riverbend Farm near Delano. I realize that a setting so gorgeous can work strange magic (farm goggles?), but I'm quite sure that aside from the view, the bounty of family-style platters, piled with fresh salads, cheeses, and wood-fire grilled meats, would blow my mind in the dingiest of rooms. When the night ended with chanterelle mushroom ice cream - a dish at once delicious, clever, and just plain fun - I knew I'd had an unforgettable meal.

If you missed last year's event, no worries: OITF is circling back to the Twin Cities on August 9, this time landing at picturesque Little Foot Farm near Afton. Given OITF's stated mission to "re-connect diners to the land and origins of their food and to honor the local farmers and food artisans who cultivate it," there will most certainly be discussion about how Little Foot owners Karen Weiss and Sally Doherty found their calling, especially given they were inspired to raise hogs in general and Berkshires in particular after being served "awesome" Berkshire pork by chef Lenny Russo at a 2005 OITF event.

Weiss and Doherty sell their heritage-breed Berkshire and Gloucestershire Old Spot hogs directly to food enthusiasts and a few local chefs, including chef Mike Phillips of Three Sons Meat Company (formerly Green Ox).

I tagged along with Phillips and chef Scott Pampuch - the two are this year's OITF host chefs - as they scouted the farm for the event and chatted with Weiss about Little Foot's sustainable philosophy and their careful practices for humanely raising and selling best-quality, highly-prized pork (as well as chickens, eggs, produce, and bedding plants).

As we talked, there might also have been a fair amount of piglet cooing going on, even by the charcuterie boys (the pic up top might be one of my favorites, ever). Oh my goodness the Gloucestershire Old Spot piglets are adorable with their snuggly snorting and flirty sly smiles. We were smitten!

You'd think it might have been tricky to move from petting pigs to planning the menu but alas, it was a seamless progression. Both Phillips and Pampuch are known for their pork mastery, so it goes without saying that the meal - which will also include piles of gorgeously prepared vegetables - will be at its essence utterly porktastic. The charcuterie was begun the very next day, in fact, with the butchering of two hogs.

Picture a dinner table set with a colorful variety of snappy, custom-made condiments to sample with each course, including the spicy-tangy-sweet Rhubarb Mostarda pictured below. Serve the mostarda as a foil for rich pork belly, pork terrine, or pork rillettes.

Buy tickets for this year's dinner at the OITF website. See Little Foot Farm's website if you're interested in purchasing heritage-breed pork, chicken, eggs, produce, or bedding plants.

See you on the farm!

Chef Matt Morgan's recipe for Rhubarb Mostarda at TC Taste/Minnesota Monthly Magazine.

Tis the season for the glory of soft-shell crabs, fried crispy and devoured while tongue-burning hot. They're in restaurants everywhere right now but they're a breeze to make at home as well, so if the craving strikes...get frying!

The Bangalore-style sauce is laced with chiles and fresh herbs, a perfect foil for rich, crispy crab.

Recipe for Crispy Soft-Shell Crabs with Spicy Bangalore-Style Dipping Sauce at Andrew Zimmern's Kitchen Adventures/Food & Wine Magazine.

So I had fried cheese for both breakfast and dinner today.

I am ridiculously obsessed with the stuff right now, to such a degree that I kind of embarrassed myself a couple of weeks ago raving about the gluten-free fried cheese curds at Red Stag in NE Minneapolis to Ryan Petz of Fulton Beer. When we ended our conversation with plans for a group brunch, he wryly suggested that maybe we'd best head to Red Stag to assuage my fried cheese craving.

So that's exactly what we did! And the crispy, salty little treats were so good that I ordered a few more rounds while at Red Stag again this past week with a group of the girls.

Apparently my years at the University of Wisconsin taught me well that There is Never Enough Fried Cheese. And that Beer is Food, although that's a different post.

But since I can't very well go running off to Red Stag every time I have a craving for fried cheese, and because tasty cheese curds aren't completely easy to obtain, I created the version pictured with slices of fresh mozzarella coated with egg and almond flour. The trick for cheese contained within - not exploding out of - a golden crust is to freeze it for a bit before frying.

Serve the melty, golden loveliness with marinara sauce and lots of basil for an almost-summer treat.

Fried Cheese with Almond Meal Crust (Gluten-Free)
Makes 4-6 slices

1 ball of fresh mozzarella, sliced into 4-6 slices, a bit less than 1/2-inch thick
2 c. almond meal
1 tsp. salt
1 large egg, lightly beaten in a flat bowl
olive oil for frying
warm marinara sauce & fresh basil for serving

Line a large plate with parchment paper.

Combine almond meal and salt on a large plate. Dip one slice of cheese in the beaten egg, then dredge the cheese slice in the almond meal mixture. Lay the cheese slice on the parchment paper. Do the same with the remaining cheese slices.

Put the uncovered plate of cheese in the freezer for 30 minutes.

Add 1/4-inch deep olive oil to a medium skillet and heat over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, fry the cold cheese slices a couple at a time, until golden brown on both sides. Transfer slices to a paper towel-lined plate and fry the rest of the cheese. Serve cheese hot with warm marinara sauce & fresh basil.