RESEP MASAKAN ORIENTAL

This spinach salad with black-eyed peas is a twist on one of my favorite American culinary traditions; the custom of serving beans and greens on New Year's Day. Supposedly eating "poor" on New Year’s Day brings much wealth and good luck throughout the year. The greens, usually braised with ham or sausage, represents paper money, and the beans, usually black-eyed peas, symbolize coins. Here, we’re presenting those ingredients in salad form, which is a great delivery system for our hot bacon dressing– the true star in this video. If one of your New Year’s resolutions is, “Eat more bacon,” then here’s another delicious way to work it into your diet. This peppery, sweet and tangy sauce is fast to make, and shines on other things besides wealth-generating spinach salads. Wouldn’t this be great in a warm potato and mushroom salad, as well as a sauce for a grilled chicken breast or pork chop? What about spooned over poached eggs, or slathered on sweet potato fries? Yes, yes, yes...

I had a request recently from the Greek food guide on About.com, Nancy, for a video recipe for a dish called "Rolo me Abelophylla," which is a meat, rice and cheese loaf in grape leaves. I decided to do a vegetarian version using lentils since I've always enjoyed cold rice and lentil salads, and thought this combo would be perfect with the grape leaves. It was. When you add the tangy feta, and consider the very holiday-ish design, this would be a fantastic item to bring to that Holiday party. Imagine the look on everyone's face when you walk in carrying this! Suddenly their cheese ball doesn't look so hot. If you decide to attempt this fairly easy ring of rice, you can find jarred grape leaves in any Greek market, or high-end store. Nancy suggests using the dried leaves if you can find them - these are boiled to soften and are larger and easier to use. But, the brand you see in the video in the larger jars worked fine. Enjoy! * Please help support free video recip...

For whatever reason, pink sauces are considered somewhat visually offensive in the foodie universe, so when describing this cranberry mustard salad dressing to your friends and family, please use hipper alternatives like, “ballet slipper” or “rosy mauve.” Whatever it’s called, I actually love the color of this vinaigrette, and think it’s especially gorgeous with the classic fall/winter salad palette. I served it over some endive garnished with persimmons, pistachios, and pomegranate seeds, and it tasted as bright and pretty as it looked. One word of caution regarding the ingredient amounts listed below: I like my salad dressings on the acidic side, so be sure to taste and adjust the amount of oil you add. You want to be careful with the walnut oil, as too much can overpower the dressing, but you can add more vegetable or olive oil, until it’s perfectly balanced for your palate. As I joke about in the video, this seasonal vinaigrette is perfect for the non-cook to bring to a family gath...

This is one of my favorite restaurant tricks ever. I invented this technique in 1985, after seeing another chef do it at a small café in San Francisco. It is an amazing way to distribute blue cheese over a salad without messing up your fingers, and without having the cheese end up alone at the bottom the of bowl when the lettuce is gone. This simple trick guarantees a perfect blue cheese portion with every forkful. As you'll see in the video recipe, it does require a plastic rotary grater, which is very inexpensive and easy to find. These graters are great if you ever need to grate large amounts of Parmesan as well, so I think they are a nice thing to have in the kitchen, even if you don't plan on using it to stun your foodie friends with the best blue cheese trick ever! Enjoy!

Tabbouleh is another one of those popular recipes for which I’ve received hundreds of food wishes for, and yet inexplicably I’ve still not posted one. Why not? I have no idea. I’m as mystified as anyone. In the meantime, I wanted to share this fine version from friend of the blog Robert Sogomonian (aka @psyrixx ). You can check out his original post here . Enjoy!

I thought it was just another one of those Las Vegas urban legends, like "loose" slot machines, and "no cover" gentlemens clubs. I'm talking about the mythical $1. 99 shrimp cocktail. Well, it's true, and I have the leftover saltine crackers to prove it. More about this culinary oddity in the feature film to follow.

They say if you video blog long enough, you’ll eventually post a snuff film. Okay, so no one says that, but that’s what this roasted beets with goat cheese and walnuts kind of felt like, as I harvested my homegrown, and completely defenseless beet. I was obviously kidding about vegetables being able to sense pain, but the more I think about it, who knows? Anyway, until I find out otherwise, I’ll assume the bloody root didn’t suffer for my pleasure, and just enjoy its incredible goodness. It’s the same assumption I use when eating chicken wings. There are very few things that pair as perfectly as roasted beets and goat cheese. Simply a match made in occasional-vegetarian heaven. When you toss in some crunchy walnuts, foraged greens, and a simple walnut oil/vinegar dressing, you have something that’s way beyond the sum of the parts.  I really can’t think of a more perfect fall lunch. By the way, in addition to making a great mid-day meal, this would also work nicely as a fancy side...

As I enjoyed this very tasty Brussels sprouts with warm bacon dressing recipe, I was reminded Thanksgiving side dish decision time is rapidly approaching. It’s that annual dilemma where we’re forced to choose five or six recipes among hundreds of potentially awesome options. What makes this decision so tough is that you want things that are traditional and comforting, but at the same time, want to keep the menu fresh and interesting. You love those buttery mashed potatoes, and yet you’ve wanted to make twice-baked potatoes for years. You always make Grandma’s chestnut stuffing, but that spicy cornbread version you saw on Pinterest sure looks amazing. What do you do? Do what I do; keep the starchy cornerstones classic, and switch up the vegetable sides instead. Go ahead and do your favorite and familiar potato, stuffing, and gravy recipe; but when it comes to tired old dishes like green bean casserole, or peas and carrots, let your freak flag fly. As long as you have a few comfort food...

I’m not sure when this relatively new tradition started, but for whatever reason, I like to come up with a new and interesting coleslaw to serve at Thanksgiving. With all the rich, heavy foods that the holiday table brings, I really enjoy the contrast these cold, crisp, bracing salads provide. I’ve been doing this for five or so years now, and this may be my favorite version. Just adding the always interesting Asian pear to a standard coleslaw would’ve been a nice enough touch, but what made this so special was the subtle heat from the pickled ginger. I can just imagine how great that piquant punch is going to work with roasted turkey, and while I still have weeks to wait for official verification, I’m pretty confident. I’m also confident you’ll be able to find some pickled ginger, especially if you have any sushi bars near you. By the way, this is not one of those “make the day before” coleslaws. You want everything fresh and crisp, and if you leave it overnight, not only will it get ...

The first time I had a spicy, cold rice noodle salad, it wasn’t the bold flavors that caught me by surprise, but the strange and addictive texture. It was so different to any pasta salad I’d ever had before, that I was kind of bummed I hadn’t known about this stuff sooner. Makes me sad to think about all the time back I wasted on those stupid, tri-color fusilli salads. Anyway, this is pretty easy and delicious stuff. I’m not even sure these noodles are technically cooked, but simply softened in very hot water to your personal preference of tenderness. You can, and many do, boil this stuff like pasta for a couple minutes, and have what’s much closer to a proper al dente angel hair, but I much prefer the toothsomeness you get using the hot water method.  Unlike undercooked wheat flour pastas, this isn’t a gummy, crunch, but much more of a “pop” or “snap” as your teeth break through the almost tender noodles. Once soaked with the vibrant dressing, and topped with the optional, but hi...

How great is Salad Lyonnaise? Lyon is considered the meat capital of France, and yet the city’s most famous, and reproduced dish is probably this simple frisee salad. Now that’s some delicious irony. Don’t worry…this salad is far from vegan. The mildly bitter greens are dressed in a shallot and Dijon dressing, it’s spiked with a generous handful of crispy lardons, or bacon in my case, and topped with a runny egg. By the way, unless you’re some kind of crazy person, you’re going to need some crispy croutons or crostini to finish this masterpiece off. Here’s a link to the ones I used for this , sans Parmigiano-Reggiano. You’ll also want to taste and adjust the dressing to your liking. I use a 2-to-1, oil to vinegar ratio, as I think you need some acidity to cut the richness of the bacon and egg yolk, but you may not want it as sharp. As I joked about in the video, this is so tasty, it may be the only salad that has a chance to be picked as someone’s last meal. There’s good, and then th...

This quick and dirty video recipe for grilled romaine hearts was shot on location at Tanimura & Antle , a family-owned lettuce farm we toured as part of the Get to Know a California Farmer field trip Michele and I just returned from in Carmel, CA. The event was to introduce their website and, as the name implies, help us get to know a farmer, and that's what we did. We got a fascinating look into how lettuce gets from their farm to your table. Brian Antle, the farm’s Harvest Manager, ran the tour, and it was a joy to hear him talk with such pride about what his and the Tanimura family had created from this land.  After the tour we were treated to a wonderful lunch showing off some of the farm’s famous foliage. The grilled romaine salad you’ll see in the video was a big hit, but we also had some beautiful pizzas, as you can see below. It always feels special to eat produce that was just picked hours before. You’ll also see a short video I did showing how the lettuce goes from d...

It’s not unusual for me to steal a recipe idea from a local restaurant, but it’s not everyday that I’m inspired by something I eat at a bowling alley. This happened recently at the Mission Bowling Club , a fun and funky, six-lane bowling alley located just a few blocks from our home, which despite the cacophony, features some of the City’s best bites. In addition to an otherworldly fried chicken appetizer, and a “granulated,” aged beef burger some (including my wife Michele) consider the best in the City, the MBC also features daily specials, and one such offering was described as an “heirloom tomato salad topped with a crispy rye crumble.” That sounded great to us, and our server vouched for its excellence, so we happily included it among our starters. What we didn’t know at the time, was that our server had defied the kitchen and refused to use the dish’s official name, “tomatoes and dirt.” She made this stunning admission as we raved about its deliciousness, and admitted to going ...

This magnificent peach and escarole salad was inspired by one Michele and I had on our recent trip to New York City. We were taken out to dinner by my publisher (which has nothing to do with the story, but I really enjoyed typing that) to a place called Hearth , in the East Village. The salad course was a plate of roughly torn escarole, dressed with a slightly sweet sherry vinaigrette. As I ate, I kept thinking to myself, damn, this is one delicious salad. The odd thing was, it took me a good while to actually put my finger on what exactly made it so wonderful. Then it hit me. It was made with real, full-grown, somewhat tough, slightly bitter greens. 95% of the salads I eat in restaurants these days are made with the ubiquitous "baby greens" – that bland, one-dimensional, melt-in-your-mouth mixture of lettuce, so soft and delicate you don't even need a set of teeth to eat them. This was the polar opposite of that. I had almost forg otten how interesting a salad could be! ...

I vaguely remember eating a slice on watermelon as a young child and watching in shock and horror as my grandfather started sprinkling salt on his slice. I said whatever the 5 year old version of “what the hell are you doing?” was. He said something like “it makes it sweeter.” What? Needless to say that didn’t make any sense at the time. Fast forward 30 years later to a café in San Francisco where I was served a green salad garnished with sweet, juicy watermelon, crumbled feta che ese, and toasted cashews. Wow, it was amazing! What a combination of sweet, salty, juicy, creamy, crunchy, and just…mmmmm. Ah ha! I finally understood what grandfather was doing. Better late than never. This video recipe was pieced together with footage I shot last year when I was just playing around with my new webcam. I found it and decided to add some new voice-over and show you this great salad. Yes, it’s a bit unusual, but one bite and you will be hooked. You’ll get to see and hear both sleeveless an...

Most gastronerds credit Peru with giving us the marinated seafood salad called "ceviche," but I imagine that most coastal fishing cultures developed similar dishes. In fact, tuna poke, which is a very popular appetizer here on the West Coast, is a very similar idea. I've already posted one ceviche recipe on the blog, called " Bay Scallop and Mango Ceviche ." It was originally posted to Youtube, where it caused a virtual riot among my Peruvian friends. Ceviche is their national dish, and they don't take kindly to people like me adding things like mango, and still calling it ceviche. Apparently, there is only one way to make ceviche, and no variations shall bear the sacred name, ceviche. I tried to defend myself with the usual, "it's my recipe, and I'll call it whatever I want." This only infuriated them more, and it almost turned into an international incident as I ignored their demands to change the name. While this recipe is much more tra...

Yes, it’s true what they say, bacon makes everything tastes better. Even bacon tastes better with bacon. Recently I saw an online lecture by a woman who makes specialty chocolates and she had actually done chocolate with bacon. So, now it’s really official, bacon goes with everything! By the way, I plan on posting her lecture, which I found equally inspiring and perplexing, but that’s for another day. Today we’re making a very simple warm bacon dressing to go over some pan cooked halibut. With just a few ingredients, and a very simple procedure, we’re going to produce some amazingly delicious results. The smokiness of the bacon is such a great match with the meaty halibut, and the slightly sweet/sour profile of the fresh lemon and rice vinegar brings this all together. Usually at this point I tell you a few ways you can alter the recipe to match your personal tastes…forget that. Make this exactly like I show you. Enjoy! Ingredients: 2 halibut steaks (about 3/4 to 1 inch thick) 1/2 lem...

They say when life gives you lemons, make lemonade; but what about when life gives you empty mayonnaise jars? Mayonade? No, of course not. We’re going to make salad dressing instead, and “scrape the scrape.” I’ll often add a tablespoon or two of mayonnaise when I make a vinaigrette, to help emulsify things, as well as provide a little extra creaminess to the dressing. With that in mind, when I get down to the end of a jar, I don’t scrape, I shake. I’m posting the ingredients I used below just in case you’re curious, but this post isn’t really about a recipe, but simply a tip for using up the last of that mayo without all that annoying butterknifing. Now, I just need to work on a recipe for using up the last of the dressing clinging to the inside of the jar. Enjoy! Ingredients for 1 1/2 cups of dressing: 1 empty mayo jar, with at least 1 tbsp of mayo inside 1 clove minced garlic 1 tbsp chopped fresh herbs (I used parsley, thyme, and chives) 1/2 cup wine vinegar 1 cup olive oil salt and...

I’ve never been a big fan of panzanella salad. I love the flavors in the dish, but stale, soggy bread just isn’t something I crave. The sogginess is understandable, as this dish was invented as a way to ingest rock-hard bread, but now that we’re just making it for fun, and not to avoid starvation, we can tweak a few things for texture’s sake. The key is frying the bread cubes in loads of olive oil, in a skillet, which obviously makes them crispy, but the healthful fat also soaks in and renders them semi-waterproof, or should I say dressing-proof. The same goes for the dusting of Parmesan we apply halfway through. You may be tempted to save some work and bake them in the oven, but don’t. By using the pan, you get nice, crispy surfaces, but the very center of the crouton stays just a touch chewy. The oven tends to dry the bread out, and you don’t get the same texture. The gorgeous pool of tomato juices, oil, and wine vinegar will still soak in, and soften the bread, but you’ll still ge...

"Cuisine Spontané" is just a fancy French term for wandering around a market, without any preconceived plans, grabbing whatever looks enticing, and then heading back to the kitchen to create a meal in a sort of culinary stream of consciousness. It’s a really fun way to cook. By the way, I’m sure there are a few soccer moms out there reading this right now thinking, “wow, I do that like 5 times a week…so that’s what it’s called!” And you thought you were just rushing through the grocery store throwing things in the basket. For my wife Michele and I, this "Cuisine Spontané" approach was applied quite deliciously to a recent picnic lunch we enjoyed in beautiful Dolores Park. It ended up being a two-course meal. The elements were picked up on 24th Street in Noe Valley, on the same walk I wrote about in the Farmers Market post. The first course was spicy chicken served in heart of romaine lettuce cups with fresh cilantro. We bought a pint container of some wonderful stew...