…from the Perspectives’ Kitchen![]() How you doin’? What do you do when you have left over rotisserie chicken?… wrap it all up! I like to make quick lunch wraps with leftovers in the test kitchen. My Grilled Tortilla Chicken Wrap recipe is just perfect for an easy lunch or simple weeknight dinner. Add all your favorite salad veggies and a yummy sauce for a delicious summer meal. Feel free to add green onions, shredded carrots, diced celery, feta cheese, or any other salad ingredients you have hanging out in the fridge. Prep time: 15 minutes Yield: 4 to 6 servings Ingredients 1 pound shredded leftover roasted or rotisserie chicken breasts or thighs 2 cups tzatziki sauce 4 to 6 large tortillas warmed 1 cup shredded romaine lettuce 4 to 6 thinly sliced tomatoes 12 sliced red onion rings Directions
Greek Tzatziki Sauce Prep time: 10 minutes Yield: 4 to 6 servings My easy tzatziki sauce is a delicious summer condiment. Use it to dress up grilled veggies or a chilled crudité, sandwiches, salads and more, or add it to my Grilled Tortilla Chicken Wrap. Ingredients 1/2 cup finely chopped cucumber 1 cup thick whole milk Greek yogurt 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice 1/2 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil 1 grated garlic clove 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt 1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill 1 tablespoon chopped fresh mint, optional Directions
ChefSecret: Add a little more texture and flavor by grilling the assembled wrap in the same frying pan with a touch of melted butter. Quip of the Day: What’s a sandwich’s favorite type of music? Wrap. ------------------------------------------- Do you have a question or comment? Send your thoughts to [email protected]. 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, positive, stay well, stay safe and be kind. Take a breath and count your blessings, and if you have a little extra to share with others, please consider donating to Feeding America, Tunnel to Towers, Union Rescue Mission and/or American Red Cross. #Entree #Wrap #RotisserieChicken #GrilledTortilla #TzatzikiSauce #Summertime #2024Recipes #URM #T2T #FeedingAmerica #RedCross #PerspectivesTheConsultingGroup ©PERSPECTIVES/The Consulting Group, LLC, 2024
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…from the Perspectives’ Kitchen![]() How you doin’? Two of our favorite clients over the years were King’s Hawaiian (breads and rolls) and Hidden Valley (dressings)—two exceptional consumer products. Actually, King’s Hawaiian was the main stay of my breadbasket at the Custom House Restaurants. In the late ‘80s that sweet, yellow, yeasty pillow loaf was one of the food items that sent our restaurants over the top. And what restaurant didn’t offer Ranch dressing with their salad offering? Now, all these years later, these two companies are still on the top of their game not only with their original products, but with new great tasting offerings that are every bit as quality driven as the originals. So, it’s fun to marry the two together as part of these zippy Tennessee Hot Chicken Dunkers Hot chicken dishes are said to have originated in Nashville. They were bone-in chicken pieces, marinated in a water-based blend of spices and seasonings, floured, fried, and sauced using a paste with cayenne pepper, served on slices of white bread with pickle chips. Anecdotal evidence suggests that spicy fried chicken has been served in Nashville's African American communities for generations. Hot chicken may have been introduced as early as the 1930s; however, the current style of spice may only date back to the mid-1970s. It is generally accepted that the originator of hot chicken is the family of André Prince Jeffries, owner of Prince's Hot Chicken Shack. She has operated the restaurant since 1980; before that time, it was owned by her great-uncle, Thornton Prince III. Although impossible to verify, Jeffries says the development of hot chicken was an accident. Her great-uncle Thornton was purportedly a terrible womanizer, and after a particularly late Saturday night out, his girlfriend at the time cooked him a fried chicken breakfast with extra pepper as revenge. Instead, Thornton decided he loved it so much that, by the mid-1930s, he and his brothers had created their own recipe and opened the BBQ Chicken Shack café. My recipe for Tennessee Hot Chicken Dunkers utilizes a similar spice profile and Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing as a cooling flavor extender and dunker. Prep time: 15 minutes Marinade time: 1-4 hours Cook time: 8 minutes Assembly time: 5 minutes Yield: 8 servings Ingredients 8 each King's Hawaiian® Original Hawaiian Sweet Pretzel Pre-Sliced Slider Buns 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened 4 large chicken thighs 10 ounces buttermilk 11 tablespoons bottles Nashville-style hot seasoning, divided (I prefer Frank’s) 1 large bottle canola oil 1 cup corn starch 1 cup all-purpose flour 1 cup panko breadcrumbs 1 cup melted butter 1/3 cup water 16 dill pickle chips 3 cups coleslaw (vinegar profile) 3 tomatoes cut into 16 slices Original Hidden Valley Ranch®Dressing Directions
ChefSecret: Most recipes call for chicken breast meat, I like to use chicken thigh meat because it is juicer and more tender for this type of sandwich and it is a lot less expensive to buy. . Quip of the Day: Q. What do you call a country song about Nashville’s famous hot chicken? A. A cluckin’ good tune!” ------------------------------------------- Do you have a question or comment? Send your thoughts to [email protected]. 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, positive, stay well, stay safe and be kind. Take a breath and count your blessings, and if you have a little extra to share with others, please consider donating to Feeding America, Tunnel to Towers, Union Rescue Mission and/or American Red Cross. #Entree #Lunch #Dinner #NashvilleHotChickenDunkers #KingsHawaiian #FranksHotSauce #HiddenValleyRanch #2024Recipes #URM #T2T #FeedingAmerica #RedCross #PerspectivesTheConsultingGroup ©PERSPECTIVES/The Consulting Group, LLC, 2024 …from the Perspectives’ Kitchen![]() How you doin’? Summertime is salad and dip time. One of my all-time favorite salads is The Cobb—I can eat one every day and never get bored because of the different and interesting ingredients. The varied flavors and textures give you what we call comeback flavor. You might ask yourself, what’s the origin of this now most popular salad? Well, the story goes like this… The Brown Derby-Beverly Hills was actually Perspectives’ first client. Sally Cobb, Bob Cobb’s widow, was trying to keep the Derby in Beverly Hills afloat at a time when the entire restaurant scene in Los Angeles was changing. I used to love the Brown Derby, and especially the classic Cobb Salad. So, here's the recipe along with the Hollywood folklore of how it was invented as told to me by Sally Cobb. One night in 1925—almost one hundred years ago!—Herbert K. Somborn was chatting with Abe Frank, the manager of the Los Angeles Ambassador Hotel, and Sid Grauman of Chinese Theater fame; and as idle chatter goes he remarked, "You could open a restaurant in an alley and call it anything or you could even build it in the shape of a hat and if the food and service are good, the patrons will come flocking." To achieve the standards set for this little Derby, Somborn, the husband of the celebrated cinema star, Gloria Swanson, selected a young friend who had been raised in the restaurant business. This was Robert H. Cobb, a combination food checker, steward, buyer, cashier and occasional cook when the Brown Derby opened. During its first four years, the original Little Hat Derby restaurant added only two items to its menu—a salad and a cake. The salad was almost an accident. Bob Cobb, growing weary of the steady hot-dog-hamburger diet, found an avocado in the icebox. He chopped it up, along with some lettuce, celery and tomatoes, plus a strip of bacon and some salad dressing, and had that for his dinner. Several days later he tried it again, adding other ingredients that he had purchased on his way to work—breast of turkey (some people claim it was chicken, but it was originally turkey), chives, hard-boiled egg, watercress and a wedge of Roquefort cheese for the dressing. And that's how the Cobb Salad was really born. Everything was finely chopped and that was very laborious, so Mr. Cobb went to an engineer who was able to invent a horizontal chopper. That device was later reproduced by Hobart Corporation and named the Buffalo Chopper (named for the city in which the concept was born). Since it’s summer I decided that I wanted to invent a dip to bring to family picnics that emulated the flavors of The Cobb Salad. With the help of Hidden Valley Ranch dip mix and all of the other Cobb Salad ingredients all chopped up it was like magic—the Cobb Salad Dip. Prep Time: 15-20 Minutes Yield: 8 to 10 servings Ingredients 1 packet Hidden Valley Original Ranch Dips Mix 16 ounces sour cream 3/4 cup shredded cooked chicken 1/2 cup crumbled bacon, plus 2 tablespoons more for garnish 1/2 cup crumbled hard-boiled eggs 1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese, plus 1/4 cup more for garnish 3/4 cup diced avocado 1/2 cup diced tomato 1 teaspoon Tabasco sauce (optional) Directions
ChefSecret: Got leftovers? Be safe—refrigerate within 2 hours after putting the dip out, or discard it. Quip of the Day: My friend ordered a cobb salad yesterday and was disappointed there was no corn or cobs in this iconic salad. ------------------------------------------- Do you have a question or comment? Send your thoughts to [email protected]. 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, positive, stay well, stay safe and be kind. Take a breath and count your blessings, and if you have a little extra to share with others, please consider donating to Feeding America, Tunnel to Towers, Union Rescue Mission and/or American Red Cross. #Appetizer #Dip #CobbDip #Salad #CobbSalad #BrownDerby #Brunch #Lunch #HiddenValley #Cheez-It #Ritz #2024Recipes #URM #T2T #FeedingAmerica #RedCross #PerspectivesTheConsultingGroup ©PERSPECTIVES/The Consulting Group, LLC, 2024 …from the Perspectives’ Kitchen ![]() How you doin’? When I was growing up my mother used to think of “cute” names of meals to make them more inviting—dinner omelets we called Conglomeration—eggs mixed with most anything. Taste Ticklers were sweet and sour Danish meatballs. Egg salad with avocado was Green Egg Surprise. Everything was a surprise in our house. You would have thought she had trouble getting me to eat—that wasn’t true. I haven’t thought about Egg Surprise in years until I saw a recipe in the Gelson’s flyer recently. What is Green Egg Surprise? It’s very green egg salad made with perfectly ripe avocados, a little chopped garlic, dill and parsley, and freshly squeezed lemon juice. It’s super creamy and fresh and I love adding the herbs to the mix for more flavor thrills. The herbs give the salad a nice flavor and spring flair without squashing its essential egginess. Even without all the mayo, this tastes like a great egg salad we all know and love. The beauty of avocado egg salad, of course, is that it’s easy to make—you can even let the kids help you out by doing the mashing. And then it’s just a matter of piling it on a toasty everything bagel. Yes, it will taste great on any sort of bagel, but the combo of creamy, herby, crunchy, oniony, seedy and garlicky is pretty damn magical. Bagel sandwiches are a no-brainer for a fancy midweek lunch or weekend brunch. Bagels are always delicious, and people are generally surprised and delighted to see egg salad—it’s one of those classics that most of us forget to make at home. Prep Time: 15 minutes Cook Time: 25 minutes (eggs) Yield: Serves 6 Ingredients 2 ripe avocados, peeled and pitted 6 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and medium diced 3 tablespoons chopped fresh dill, plus more for garnish 3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley 2 tablespoons minced garlic 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice 2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil 2 teaspoons kosher salt or to your taste 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper or to your taste 6 everything bagels, cut in half and toasted And, yes… there is no mayonnaise Directions
ChefSecret: If you don’t have fresh dill or parsley on hand, you can use chives, tarragon or cilantro instead. I cook my eggs just until the water boils. I take the eggs off the heat and let them steep in hot water for 17 minutes. Then I plunge them in cold ice water with ice cubes until completely chilled. Surprise—those eggs will be perfect. Quip of the Day: Where can you go to learn more about eggs? The hen-cyclopedia. ------------------------------------------- Do you have a question or comment? Send your favorite recipes, pictures or thoughts to [email protected]. 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, positive, stay well, stay safe and be kind. Take a breath and count your blessings, and if you have a little extra to share with others, please consider donating to Feeding America, Tunnel to Towers, Union Rescue Mission and/or American Red Cross. #Entree #Salad #Sandwich #Bagel #EggSaladSurprise #Avocado #AvocadoEggSalad #EverythingBagel #Bagel #Lunch #2024Recipes #URM #T2T #FeedingAmerica #RedCross #PerspectivesTheConsultingGroup ©PERSPECTIVES/The Consulting Group, LLC, 2024 Zesty Grilled Chicken Salad![]() How you doin’? I really hate boring salads—you know the ones that have a little iceberg lettuce and a tomato slice with a bottled commercial dressing? We can do so much better than that. The bestselling salad at my first restaurant was The Conglomeration. It was a large salad made with chopped iceberg, romaine, crisp bacon, chopped hard cooked egg, cucumber, shredded carrots, diced celery, chopped olives, red onion and chunks of soft white cheese. All of this was tossed with my secret Champagne vinaigrette—a masterpiece! The more “orts” (ingredients) the better. We even took care to serve it on a Hawaiian monkey pod, garlic rubbed salad plate. When we found out this was the bestselling salad, I put our kitchen staff’s talents to invent and test new mixed salads. I declared our restaurant would never serve ho-hum salads. Even our Angel’s Fruit & Yogurt Salad was loaded with flavors and textures. Our guests used to ask me, why can’t I make salads like this at home? You see, restaurant salads are delicious because of the variety and freshness of the ingredients. Most people don’t keep a wide variety of fresh veggies on hand for fear they will spoil before consuming. So please trust me, there's more to making salads than heaping on a pile of deep-fried croutons and boatloads of cheese. Here is what you can do from your very own kitchen to make the best salads ever:
Ingredients 4 ounces spring lettuce mix salad blend 4 tablespoons grilled chopped chicken breast 3 tablespoons grilled fresh corn 3 tablespoons low-sodium, canned black beans, drained 3 grape tomatoes, halved 2 tablespoons red or yellow bell peppers, diced 1-1/2 tablespoons Mexican cheese blend 1 tablespoon hulled pepitas, toasted 2 ounces Spicy Cilantro-Avocado Dressing, (see recipe below) 3 thin slices of fresh lemon, quartered ... and whatever you want to add Directions
ChefSecret: I sometimes use leftover chilled chicken meat or better yet warm fried chicken tenders in this salad. Zesty Avocado-Cilantro Dressing Prep time: 5 minutes Cook time: 15 minutes Total time: 20 minutes Yield: 16 ounces+ Ingredients 2 ounces toasted macadamia nuts 1 tablespoon fresh cilantro leaves 1 teaspoon fresh, peeled garlic 1/2 teaspoon fresh, seeded and ribbed diced red jalapeño pepper 3/4 cup fresh, peeled and pitted avocado 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice 5 ounces cold water 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt Directions
ChefSecrets: Freshly-roasting the macadamia nuts adds another level of flavor to the salad dressing. Quip of the Day: “Why is it called a Caesar Salad? ‘Cause Caesar ruled the romaines.” ------------------------------------------- Do you have a question or comment? Send your thoughts to [email protected]. 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, positive, stay well, stay safe and be kind. Take a breath and count your blessings, and if you have a little extra to share with others, please consider donating to Feeding America, Tunnel to Towers, Union Rescue Mission and/or American Red Cross. #EntreeSalads #Salads #PerfectSalads #Lunch #Dinner #Vinaigrette #CilantroAvocado #Dressing #2024Recipes #URM #T2T #FeedingAmerica #RedCross #PerspectivesTheConsultingGroup ©PERSPECTIVES/The Consulting Group, LLC, 2024 |
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