The Thanksgiving CollectionHow you doin’? With so much going on to prepare the holiday dinner why not make a simple Iceberg Wedge Salad which is the perfect starter or side dish. The classic Iceberg Wedge is made of chopped crisp bacon, diced ripe tomatoes, full flavor blue cheese, diced hard boiled eggs and drizzled with homemade blue cheese dressing. This is my original, Monster Iceberg Wedge Salad with Blue Cheese Dressing. First, you have to wash and cut the lettuce by taking a whole head of Iceberg lettuce and removing any wilting or brown leaves from the exterior. See complete directions below. At Margaritaville in Las Vegas Chef Spencer and I created a grilled wedge salad. Yes, you really can grill it. I love the additional layer of flavor—a good, charred taste and look. To grill your lettuce cut and clean as usual. Drizzle some olive oil then sprinkle with salt and pepper. Grill for a couple of minutes on each flat side until you get the desired char. I like to make my own blue cheese dressing to taste. In a small bowl, whisk Greek yogurt, sour cream, mayonnaise, milk, Worcestershire, blue cheese crumbles, white balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper together for the dressing. Drizzle each lettuce wedge generously with dressing and let it run over the lettuce wedge onto the plate. In a pinch you can always use store bought dressings. The best to my taste is Bob’s Blue Cheese Dressing (found in the refrigerated or Produce section) or one of the Ranch Dressings. If you’re not into the flavor of blue cheese try Peter Luger’s Steakhouse Dressing sometime (found refrigerated in the meat department). An Iceberg Wedge Salad with blue cheese dressing and bountiful toppings is the perfect starter that goes with almost any holiday dinner. Prep time: 15 minutes Yield: 2 servings Ingredients For the blue cheese dressing 1/4 cup original tart Greek yogurt plain 3 tablespoons sour cream 1 tablespoon mayonnaise 3 tablespoons milk 1/4 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce 1/3 cup blue cheese crumbles 2 teaspoons white balsamic vinegar (or apple cider vinegar) 1/2 teaspoon freshly-ground coarse black pepper Salt to taste for the wedge salads 1/2 head fresh, washed and chilled iceberg lettuce cut in half 1/3 cup bacon cooked and crumbled (I prefer the flavor of Benton smoked bacon) 4 hard boiled chopped eggs 8 grape tomatoes sliced in half 2 to 4 tablespoons extra blue cheese crumbles for topping 2 teaspoons freshly cut chives for garnish Directions
ChefSecret: Using fresh and cold iceberg lettuce is the best way to make and keep a crispy salad! After you have washed the entire head of lettuce, save it (or any leftover portion of it) by wrapping the cut side in paper towel and storing it in a gallon size zip top bag with the top slightly open. Remove as much water as possible before storage and keep it cut side (or core side) down so it can continue to drain. It should stay fresh for up to 7 days. Quip of the Day: “Sometimes someone unexpected comes out of the nowhere, makes your heart skip a beat and changes your life forever—we call these people cops.” ------------------------------------------- Do you have a question or comment? Send your thoughts to ed@perspectives-la.com. All recipes and cooking tips are posted on our website https://www.perspectives-la.com/covid-19-survival-guide. ------------------------------------------- To you and everyone dear to you, be strong, be positive, stay well, stay safe and be kind. Have a wonderful safe and healthy holiday. If you have a little extra in your pockets to share with others at this difficult time, please consider donating to Feeding America. #ThanksgivingRecipes #Thanksgiving #Salads #IcebergWedge #BentonBacon #BlueCheese #PeterLuger #HolidayRecipes #Holidays2021 #Thankful #QuarantineKitchen #Covid19 #FeedingAmerica #PerspectivesTheConsultingGroup ©Perspectives/The Consulting Group, Inc., 2021
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The Thanksgiving CollectionHow you doin’? No matter where your family is from everyone living in the United States has a reason to celebrate Thanksgiving in their own way with their own family legacy recipes. That’s what makes this holiday so special. Perspectives published a holiday cookbook several years ago and asked all of our coworkers to contribute some of their family favorites to the recipe collection. Kim was our first Los Angeles employee and was/is quite a good cook. This was her family recipe for one of the iconic dishes of Thanksgiving. Beats the canned stuff any day! This cranberry dish will definitely add a different zing to your holiday table. Cranberries are native to the swamps and bogs of northeastern North America. There are about 125 genera and about 3500 species of the plant. The cranberry is a Native American wetland fruit which grows on trailing vines like a strawberry. The vines thrive on the special combination of soils and water properties found in wetlands. Cranberries were a staple for Native Americans, who harvested wild cranberries and used them in a variety of remedies, foods and drinks. In the Engoron household, canned cranberry sauce was always the dish that was left forgotten in the back of the refrigerator. Put a note on your fridge reminding you to serve it up. Prep time: 10 minutes Cook time: 5 to 9 minutes Yield: 1-1/2 cups Ingredients 1 tablespoon crushed garlic clove 1/4 cup chopped yellow onion 3 tablespoons unsalted butter 1/2 teaspoon finely chopped fresh thyme 1/2 teaspoon finely chopped fresh basil 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 16 ounces whole berry cranberries (I prefer Oceanspray) 1/4 cup dry red wine 1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped Directions
ChefSecret: Spice it up a notch by substituting the 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper with 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper. This recipe can be made up to two days' ahead of time if covered and refrigerated. Quip of the Day: “What happened to the turkey that got in a fight?" "He got the stuffing knocked out of him!” ------------------------------------------- Do you have a question or comment? Send your thoughts to ed@perspectives-la.com. All recipes and cooking tips are posted on our website https://www.perspectives-la.com/covid-19-survival-guide. ------------------------------------------- To you and everyone dear to you, be strong, be positive, stay well, stay safe and be kind. Have a wonderful safe and healthy holiday. If you have a little extra in your pockets to share with others at this difficult time, please consider donating to Feeding America. #ThanksgivingRecipes #Thanksgiving #SideDishes #Cranberries #HolidayRecipes #Holidays2021 #Thankful #QuarantineKitchen #Covid19 #FeedingAmerica #PerspectivesTheConsultingGroup ©Perspectives/The Consulting Group, Inc., 2021 The Thanksgiving Happy Hour CollectionHow you doin’? I am always fascinated by the anthropology of various foods and drinks, aren’t you? So many people want to be credited for inventing Buffalo Wings, Donuts or even fan favorite libations. Take, for instance the Cosmopolitan Cocktail. The International Bartenders Association’s Cosmo recipe (that sure sounds official) is based on lemon-flavored vodka. The Cosmopolitan is a relative of cranberry coolers like the Cape Codder. Though often presented far differently, the Cosmopolitan also bears a likeness in composition to the kamikaze cocktail. Regardless of what the IBA says, the origin of the Cosmopolitan is heavily disputed. Claim #1… While the Cosmo cocktail is widely perceived to be a more modern “mixation,” there is a recipe for a Cosmopolitan Daisy which appears in Pioneers of Mixing at Elite Bars 1903–1933, published in 1934. The original requires: A jigger of Gordon's Gin (1-1⁄2 ounces) 2 dash Cointreau (1⁄2 ounce) Juice of 1 lemon juice (1 ounce) 1 teaspoon raspberry syrup (homemade) Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass Drinks of this time were made with ingredients that would have been readily available during the period, this identically named cocktail aims for the same effect. If this drink is in fact the source of the modern Cosmopolitan, then it would be an adaption of a Daisy rather than a Kamikaze. Claim #2… Another version of the creation of this popular drink credits the accomplishment to the gay community in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Bartender Neal Murray says he created the Cosmopolitan in 1975 at the Cork & Cleaver Steak House in Minneapolis. According to Murray, he added a splash of cranberry juice to a Kamikaze and the first taster declared, "How cosmopolitan!" which supposedly led to the naming of the new beverage. Claim #3… John Caine, owner of several popular bars in San Francisco and a cosmopolitan expert, credits the upsurge in cocktails during the 1970s to the Cosmo being served at fern bars of the day. Caine credits himself with bringing the Cosmo west from Cleveland. This I can tell you is a far stretch as The Warehouse Restaurant (my restaurant) in Los Angeles was selling a Cosmo in the late 1960s. Claim #4… Cocktail historian Gary Regan credits bartender Cheryl Cook of the Strand Restaurant in South Beach, Florida with the original creation. In a letter to Regan, Cook related the story of how she created the drink in 1985 or 1986. So not true! Cook's original recipes called for "Absolut Citron, a splash of Triple sec, a drop of Rose's Lime and just enough cranberry to make it, oh so pretty in pink. It may have been a kind of Cosmo, but far from the original. Claim #5… Regan also claims that the internationally recognized version of the cocktail was created by Toby Cecchini & Melissa Huffsmith-Roth in 1989 at the Odeon restaurant in Manhattan and was based on a poorly described version of Cheryl Cook's creation. Oh my goodness, who else wants to make a claim and take credit? Claim # 6… Johnny come latelies, Sally Ann Berk and Bob Sennett claim that the Cosmopolitan first appears in literature as late as 1993 and derives from New York City. Hey, guys… maybe you should look it up on Google. They further claim that The Cosmopolitan gained popularity in the 1990s and further popularized among young women by its frequent mention on the television program Sex and the City. The use of citrus flavored vodka as the basis for this cocktail appears to have been widely popularized in the mid-1990s by Dale DeGroff and is used in the IBA-approved recipe. However, many bartenders continue to use a standard unflavored vodka and this alternative would undoubtedly be historically inconsistent with any of the supposed predecessors of this drink that were popular in Ohio, Provincetown, or Minneapolis during the 1970s, or in San Francisco during the 1980s. There are so many variations, i.e., stirring in a mixing glass instead of shaking, the Red Velvet Cosmo based on red velvet cake ingredients, the Virgin Cosmopolitan replacing the vodka and triple sec with orange juice and pink lemonade, and my favorite the Constipolitan, which uses prune juice in place of cranberry juice. Whichever claim you believe, in all of its sweet, tart glory, the Cosmopolitan is the kind of classic cocktail that always wins over a crowd. And while its most original, famous form is the traditional way to go, mixing the familiar ingredients with some unexpected splashes will give your bar a spirited twist. The one thing that is still constant in every recipe is Cointreau–the aromatic orange liqueur distilled from a blend of sweet and bitter orange peels that makes every iteration a balanced blend. Here are recipes from Cointreau to reinvent everyone’s favorite cocktail. The Classic Cosmopolitan When in doubt about what to drink for a sit-down dinner, the tried-and-true classic Cosmopolitan is always a good idea. It’s tart, it’s refreshing, and it’s pretty in pink. Ingredients (to make a batch): 1 cup of Cointreau 2 cups of vodka 1 cup cranberry juice 1 cup fresh lime 1/2 cup water (for dilution) Directions
Holiday Jam This recipe adds blackberry jam for a sweet, muddled mix. Once these fruity favorites start flowing, so will the conversation. Ingredients 3/4 ounce Cointreau 2 ounces vodka 3/4 ounce fresh lime juice 1/4 ounce cranberry juice 1 teaspoon blackberry jam Directions
Date Night For a date with a sparkling personality, dinner should start with something a little sexier to set the mood. Impress your companion with a splash sparkling. All of the classic Cosmo ingredients are here—along with a champagne topper that adds a little effervescence. Ingredients 3/4 ounce Cointreau 1-1/2 ounces vodka 1/2 ounce fresh lime juice 1/2 ounce cranberry juice 2 ounces champagne to top Directions
Winter White Cosmo Baby, it’s cold(er) outside! Warm up your friends and family with this soon-to-be seasonal staple. The snowy take on the Classic Cosmo swaps red for white cranberry, which is always a welcome switch for the stain-makers. As a festive touch, garnish with a skewer of cranberries. Directions 3/4 ounce Cointreau 2 ounces vodka 3/4 ounce fresh lime juice 1/4 ounce white cranberry juice Directions
Electro Cosmo If your idea of the perfect birthday party involves DayGlo and dance music, this supercharged drink is exactly what to serve. Thanks to an infusion of butterfly pea flower, the color of this cocktail is an electric dream come true. Ingredients 3/4 ounce Cointreau 2 ounces vodka infused with *butterfly pea flower 3/4 ounce fresh lime juice 1/4 ounce cranberry juice *Butterfly pea flower tea, commonly known as blue tea, is a caffeine-free herbal tea, or tisane, beverage made from a decoction or infusion of the flower petals or even whole flower of the Clitoria ternatea plant. Directions
ChefSecret: Cointreau is an orange-flavored triple sec liqueur produced in Saint-Barthélemy-d'Anjou, France. It is consumed as an aperitif and digestif and is part of several well-known cocktails. It was originally called Curaçao Blanco Triple Sec. Despite the orange bottle, Cointreau is colorless. The Cointreau Distillery was set up in 1849 by Adolphe Cointreau, a confectioner and his brother Edouard-Jean Cointreau. Their first success was with the cherry liqueur guignolet, but they also found success when they blended sweet and bitter orange peels and pure alcohol from sugar beets. The first bottles of Cointreau were sold in 1875. An estimated 13 million bottles are sold each year, in more than 150 countries. Quip of the Day: “My girlfriend asked me if she had any annoying habits then got all offended as I queued up the Power Point presentation.” ------------------------------------------- Do you have a question or comment? Send your thoughts to ed@perspectives-la.com. All recipes and cooking tips are posted on our website https://www.perspectives-la.com/covid-19-survival-guide . ------------------------------------------- To you and everyone dear to you, be strong, be positive, stay well, stay safe and be kind. Have a wonderful safe and healthy holiday. If you have a little extra in your pockets to share with others at this difficult time, please consider donating to Feeding America. #ThanksgivingRecipe #Thanksgiving #Cocktails #Happy Hour #Cosmopolitan #Cosmo #Cointreau #HolidayRecipes #Holidays2021 #Thankful #QuarantineKitchen #Covid19 #FeedingAmerica #PerspectivesTheConsultingGroup ©Perspectives/The Consulting Group, Inc., 2021 The Thanksgiving CollectionHow you doin’? This recipe incorporates secrets from several Southern chefs who love to make biscuits as part their Thanksgiving Day dinner tradition. One thing you can be sure of… they sure aren’t lacking in real butter flavor. This recipe adds one more step during prep and you’ll have to clean the food processor, but it’s well worth the effort. If you are planning to take these biscuits on a picnic you won’t have to worry about packing butter to spread on them as there is a double whammy of butter and possibly even more if you choose to brush melted butter on the tops when they come out of the oven. I think you’ll find my biscuits may not be a diet food but are delicious and habit-forming. You can make them even tastier by splitting them and adding a small shot of honey to each cut half. Now, that’s gilding the lily. Left over biscuits? Don’t waste ‘em! Next day, split them in half and toast them under the broiler of your oven until the middles are a light golden brown and then slather with a little boysenberry jelly. Or make them as a great breakfast feast of biscuits and gravy… you can even use that leftover gravy from last night’s turkey dinner. Yummm! Where did ‘biscuits and gravy’ originate? Biscuits and gravy in some form may go back as far as the Revolutionary War, but many food writers and culinary historians position its birthplace in Southern Appalachia in the late 1800s. Lumber was one of the main industries of the region, which supports the story that sausage gravy was also called sawmill gravy. It was the ideal cheap and calorie-dense fuel for sawmill workers lifting heavy logs all day long and the perfect tool for making the era’s biscuits more palatable. Today we need a calorie-dense breakfast to support our bodies throughout the entire Thanksgiving weekend football games we all must watch. Prep time: 20 minutes Bake time: 10 to 12 minutes Additional time: 10 minutes Yield: 12 servings Ingredients 1/2 cup unsalted butter, plus 1/4 cup frozen butter 4 cups Bisquick Original Baking Mix, plus 1/2 cup Bisquick 1 cup lemon-lime soda (such as Sprite) 1 cup sour cream Directions
Chef Secret: The frozen butter and baking mixtures adds wonderful pockets of melted butter to the inside of each biscuit. If you want your biscuits to be even more buttery, brush the tops with a little melted butter when they come out of the oven. Quip of the Day: “I’ll tell you a coronavirus joke now, but you’ll have to wait two weeks to see if you got it.” ------------------------------------------- Do you have a question or comment? Send your thoughts to ed@perspectives-la.com. All recipes and cooking tips are posted on our website https://www.perspectives-la.com/covid-19-survival-guide. ------------------------------------------- To you and everyone dear to you, be strong, be positive, stay well, stay safe and be kind. Have a wonderful safe and healthy holiday. If you have a little extra in your pockets to share with others at this difficult time, please consider donating to Feeding America. #ThanksgivingRecipe #Thanksgiving #Sides #Biscuits #Baking #HolidayRecipes #Holidays2021 #Thankful #QuarantineKitchen #Covid19 #FeedingAmerica #PerspectivesTheConsultingGroup ©Perspectives/The Consulting Group, Inc., 2021 The Thanksgiving CollectionHow you doin’? It’s just a couple of weeks until Thanksgiving Day and you are probably surveying the kitchen and all the things you’re going to need to pull off the most important family dinner of the year. Now it’s time to pair what you’ve got and what you need with a cooking schedule. You might already know that you have to go to Target, Williams-Sonoma or Sur La Table to pick up some additional serving ware. But that won’t solve for the fact that after checking it all out you find that you are 3 burners and an oven short. What is an industrious holiday cook to do? Take a look at what can be cooked in your air-fryer, Instant Pot and wait a minute… that slow-cooker Aunt Rose gave me for my wedding 10 years ago. Where did I put it? Once you find it (check the box in the back of the kitchen closet behind the waffle maker), you’ll discover that cooking sweet potatoes in a Crock Pot frees up space on the stove—plus you can serve it straight from the crock. All you need to do is plan ahead—about 8 hours ahead. While eating your holiday dinner invite your guests to play a game of Trivial Pursuit. Ask your invitees if they know where sweet potatoes originated. The stock answer is Central and South America. WRONG!!! According to radiocarbon dating, some archaeologists have found prehistoric remnants of sweet potato in Polynesia from about A.D. 1000 to A.D. 1100. However more recent research suggests the sweet potato family of plants actually originated in the late Paleocene epoch in the East Gondwana land mass that became part of Asia 57-milion years ago. Sweet potatoes were first brought to Europe by Christopher Columbus. He discovered them on his journey in 1492. He liked the vegetable so much that on his fourth voyage, he took some home to grow in Europe. As sweet potatoes were very well accepted in Spain, the Spanish conquerors took them on their journeys from that point forward. Prep time: 20 minutes Crock Pot cook time: 7 hours on low—3-1/2 hours on high (that’s why it’s called a SLOW cooker—that’s no crock) Yield: 12 servings: Ingredients Non-stick food spray 4 to 5 pounds sweet potatoes (or yams) 1 tablespoon orange zest 1/4 cup fresh orange juice 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided 3 tablespoons light brown sugar, divided 1-1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 3/4 teaspoon salt, divided 1/2 teaspoon ground pepper, divided 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg 1 cup chopped pecans 2 tablespoons American bourbon 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper to suit your taste Directions
ChefSecret: Plan ahead and do your prep early. You can refrigerate mashed sweet potatoes for up to 3 days. Store pecans airtight at room temperature for up to 3 days. Quip of the Day: Marriage Tip #2—When sitting on the front porch drinking a beer and your wife is mowing the lawn, it’s not the best time to ask her when dinner will be ready. ------------------------------------------- Do you have a question or comment? Send your thoughts to ed@perspectives-la.com. All recipes and cooking tips are posted on our website https://www.perspectives-la.com/covid-19-survival-guide. ------------------------------------------- To you and everyone dear to you, be strong, be positive, stay well, stay safe and be kind. Have a wonderful safe and healthy holiday. If you have a little extra in your pockets to share with others at this difficult time, please consider donating to Feeding America. #ThanksgivingRecipes #Thanksgiving #SideDishes #SweetPotatoes #Yams #CrockPot #SlowCooker #HolidayRecipes #Holidays2021 #Thankful #QuarantineKitchen #Covid19 #FeedingAmerica #PerspectivesTheConsultingGroup ©Perspectives/The Consulting Group, Inc., 2021 |
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