Lunch Box: Summer Salads

Ingredients:

· 1 C vegetable or chicken stock
· 1 C brown and/or wild rice mixture
· 1 C dry French green lentils
· 1/4 C Leblanc Almond Oil*
· 1/4 C BR Cohn Extra Virgin Olive Oil*
· 1/4 C BR Cohn Raspberry Vinegar*
· 2 garlic cloves, minced and mashed
· 3/4 C finely diced red onion
· 1 C dried cranberries
· 1 C chopped almonds, toasted
· Salt and Pepper to taste

Method

· Combine 1 cup water and the stock in a saucepan over high heat and bring to a boil. Add the rice, cover and simmer over medium heat until all the liquid has been absorbed, about 30 minutes.

· Meanwhile, place lentils in a saucepan over medium heat and cover with 11/4 cups water. Simmer until just tender, about 15 minutes. Drain and let cool. In a large salad bowl, combine the cooked rice and lentils.

· Prepare a vinaigrette by whisking together the walnut oil olive oil, vinegar and garlic in a small bowl. Pour the dressing over the lentils and rice. Add the red onion, dried cranberries and slivered almonds. Season with salt and pepper as desired.  Serve warm or at room temperature.

* These products are available for purchase at Datz.

Have some fun while you eat lunch and learn how to cook something new! Sign up for a Lunch Box lesson this week. You can find registration information on our website at www.datzdeli.com.

From Lunch Box Monday July 26: Homage to Jacques Pepin

Ingredients

• 1/3 C Lucero Mission Extra Virgin Olive oil*
• 3 T fresh lemon juice
• 2 tsp kosher salt
• 1 tsp Les Moulins Mahjoub Harissa*
• 1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper
• One 5-# seedless watermelon, scooped into balls with a melon baller or cut into 1 1/2-inch chunks (10 cups), chilled
• 1/2 # feta cheese, crumbled (2 cups)
• 1 1/4 C pitted kalamata olives, coarsely chopped
• 1 small red onion, cut into slivers
• 1 C mint, coarsely chopped

Method

• In a large bowl, whisk the oil, lemon juice, salt, harissa and pepper.
• Add the watermelon, feta, olives and onion and toss gently. Garnish with the mint and serve.

* These products are available at Datz

Cook’s Note: For a fun serving suggestion, reserve the scooped out watermelon rind and use as a bowl for the salad. Great for picnics!

Be sure to sign up for one of our weekday Lunch Box lessons. You can find more information and register on www.datzdeli.com.

When I was small, maybe 7 or 8, my mother instituted the rule that every Friday night was New Vegetable Night. The childhood burden of new and strange vegetables did not fare well in our household.

Unfairly blamed on my mother’s cooking, my brother and I took to pouting and temper tantrums to avoid eating anything green. It wasn’t long before New Vegetable Night became Pizza Night instead, and peace was restored in the Lee household.

Twenty years later, no longer so closed-minded, a new vegetable appeared on my plate on Friday night. And strangely, I ate it with wonder and abandon. Well… perhaps not so strangely. This was culinary school, and the lesson at hand was fiddleheads.

Fiddleheads, the tightly furled shoot of the Ostrich Fern first discovered by the Maliseet and Mi’kMaq tribes in Eastern Canada, are a springtime delicacy all the way up the East Coast. Until that night, I don’t recall ever having seen them, but they tasted like I imagined they would – like asparagus. (They smell and taste of the earth in the same way that fresh scallops taste of the ocean.) They were crunchy and earthy and green tasting and paired well with the pappardelle, crispy prosciutto and salty Parmigiano-Reggiano also on my plate.

It’s one of the few things I miss about living in the northeast – these succulent signs of spring. Asparagus. Ramps. Fiddleheads. <sigh> Desperate for a harbinger, Chef Jason Dame and I ordered them from Sid Wainer, but just the other day, I found them at The Fresh Market. (You’ll have to wait for a new shipment because I bought them all.) Jason and I served them alongside wild mushrooms in a ragout topped with a mammoth diver scallops. Oh! And finger limes. Today, I’m using up what’s left in a spring risotto – asparagus, fiddleheads, meyer lemon and creamy cana de cabra (because that’s what in the fridge). And I’m thinking that maybe my mother was on to something after all.

FIDDLEHEAD FAQ

Want to know more about fiddleheads? Here are the basics on stalking, preparation and storage:

What do they taste like? They taste like asparagus.

How can I tell if a fiddlehead is ready to eat? In the field, you can tell the fiddlehead is still young by how tightly it is furled. If the furl is loosening into a fern, it’s gone by.

How long will a fiddlehead stay fresh? Most chefs like to use them the same day, but you can blanch or steam them for less than a minute, lay them on a cookie sheet and freeze them solid. Then you can keep them in a bag in your freezer.

What’s a simple way to eat a fiddlehead? Steam or blanche the fiddlehead for three minutes, douse them with butter and lemon, and serve as a side dish.

How long is fiddlehead season? Fiddlehead season lasts about three weeks. Since the timing varies from Virginia to Canada, you can usually order them for about six weeks from somewhere.

NOTE: Not all ferns are edible, so stalkers should arm themselves with information or get a knowledgeable partner to go out with. Also, don’t be too greedy. Stalkers ask that people take no more than a third of an outcropping so the crop can be sustained

If you’re a connoisseur of fine beer, the day may come when you’ve grown weary of sampling the creations of others. If you can no longer satisfy your cravings, you may want to take the plunge and try your hand at brewing beer of your own.

Many people are afraid to start brewing their own beer because they think the process is intimidating, but the truth is: it’s far easier than you may think. The equipment is not complicated or expensive. Plus, following a recipe for beer is much like following your grandmother’s favorite recipe for baking a cake from scratch. Measure this, boil that, and Voila! You’re drinking your own beer and impressing your friends.

That said, there’s any number of places you can get how-to information. YouTube has come great videos, and the internet is a wealth of (sometimes conflicting) knowledge. The best books out there are The Joy of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian, and How to Brew by John Palmer. They walk you, step-by-step, through the whole process. Further, How to Brew has its own website where you can read much of the book for free! (Check it out at www.howtobrew.com.)

Of course, the best way to learn (in my humble opinion) is for you to come out to Datz for free classes! In a little less than two hours we’ll walk you through the process, actually making beer while we talk. And as an added plus, a few short weeks after we make the beer, come in and pick up a free bottle of the very same brew we made together!

No matter what route you decide, the next step is always the same: buying the “stuff” to make it happen. Luckily there is a most excellent homebrew supply store here in Tampa. Southern Brewing Supply is located up on Busch Boulevard and has everything you need to start brewing. They are open Monday through Saturday and are extremely helpful to both the novice and expert alike. If you walked in and said “I want to make beer, but don’t know how,” they’ll square you away.

If for some reason you can’t make it out to Southern Brewing, try the internet. There are a “gazillion” brewing supply stores on the web. Now, I don’t want to make a giant list here (because heaven knows it would take me a while to type a gazillion of anything), so again I recommend talking to Mr. Google. However, if you would like to see a good one, try www.northernbrewer.com. Very good prices on everything and shipping is only $7.99, no matter how much or what you buy.

Finally, you’ll need ingredients. Again, Southern Brewing or a nice web based company has everything you need. Start out by buying a ready-made kit. Homebrew shops will already have everything you need put together and will come with a handy little “recipe.” Too easy.

And that, in a nutshell, is all you need to know. Just go get a little smarter on it, and then dive right in. Again, we’d love to have you come out to Datz for the Homebrewing 101 class. Just go to the events page on the Datz website. Scroll down and find a homebrewing class that still has availability and register!

It’s free, it’s easy, and I promise to make the class as fun as possible (which is pretty dang fun.) As most people like to sip a beer while we making the beer, the class gets even better and more fun as the night wear on.

As Ben Franklin notably said, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” So get to brewing!

-Danny Reid

And so it begins. Another foodie Œblog. Which begs the question, why – in the land of delicious ramblings (steamy kitchen, orangette, delicious days, serious eats, taylor eason, the stew, mouth of the bay… yummmm) – datz4foodies?

Because at datz, we are omnivores. carnivorous, chocolate-loving, bacon-hoarding, wineauxs, beer geeks and curd nerds.Unapologetic flavor crusaders. Which makes this blog… simply….a playground for the epi-curious. where the heart-warming  merry-go-round of vintage, comfort foods are just as exciting as the as-yet-unexplored sandbox of culinary traditions found Œround the globe. a place that believes a glass of wine is best shared among friends. So stick around. Join us for ongoing culinary conversations and epicurean experiences. Then…tell your friends.

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