Sometimes it Works, Sometimes it Doesn't

I have been busy experimenting with recipes for the upcoming April 12th Wine Tasting Event for the benefit of the Boys and Girls Club of Aberdeen. I have 6 wines I will be pairing with appetizers created especially for that particular wine. Learning to rate a wine will be a part of this process of finding out what one likes about a wine, or dislikes. Finding if the wine is great all on its own, or better/worse with a food. 

I go about the pairing of food to a wine by using a list of appropriate foods that are best with a particular varietal or style of wine and selecting items that would pair well to create an appetizer. I wrote a few days back about the empanadas I created. Aside from the mess I made of the edges before getting the crimping and folding right, the flavors were excellent. While I have not tasted the wine that these will pair with, I have tasted this brand of wine in the past and I believe the flavors will be excellent. 

Normally, I create a recipe and the execution is relatively flawless. Last evening I was making an idea of an appetizer to pair with some very high end Italian wines, and the flavors were just perfect. The way it was put together, however, was most definitely not. The Porcini & Coffee Rub made the flank steak just scrumptious. The Garlic Blue Cheese Mashed Potatoes were delicious. But... I used Yukon Gold potatoes and they just came out too soft to work with. I am going to experiment tonight with Russets and see if they work better. Nothing wrong with the flavors though! If you are having a nice strong red wine, such as a Cabernet or a strong Italian wine, these potatoes are the ticket!

Roasted Garlic & Blue Cheese Mashed Potatoes

Serves 3 - 4, for a meal

3 - 6 cloves roasted garlic
2 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled, diced, cooked in salted water
4 ounces Gorgonzola or Blue Crumbles (1 cup)
2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves, minced
1 teaspoon Kosher salt
1 tablespoon olive oil

Put the potatoes through a ricer or whip with a mixer, adding the rest of the ingredients to blend well.

Beautiful presentation, but impractical

My original idea was to see if I could roll the slices of flank steak into a cone shape, pinning the edges with a cocktail toothpick, and then piping the mashed potatoes into the cone. That idea was a complete, total no-go. There was no way to secure the cone so it wouldn't fall open. Instead, I tried rolling the meat slice into a tube and piping the mashed potatoes into the tube, but the mashed potatoes, while delicious, were far too soft. Strike two. I had some fancy cocktail bread in the freezer so I got that out and sliced it very thinly. The bread was about 3-inches in diameter. I brushed the bread with olive oil and toasted both sides under the broiler for a minute to crisp. I cut a piece of the thinly sliced flank steak about 3 x 3-inches, set it on the bread, then topped with a piped rosette of mashed potatoes. This was a beautiful presentation, so I went with that. I invited my sister-in-law, Sherri over and along with my husband, we all ate these appetizers for dinner, discussing flavors, presentation and practicality. 

We all agreed the flavors were perfect. The presentation was lovely. However, the actual eating was a really big problem. Flank steak is a nice cut of meat, if you slice against the grain. Once a piece is as large as the 3 x 3-inch square I set on the toasted bread, there is far too much of the long grain of the meat. It was hard to take a bite. The whole piece of meat wanted to drag along, and with the mashed potatoes so very soft, they tended to want to slide off and make a mess. Not good when one is walking around with a glass of wine in one hand at a party or event.

So, we spent quite a while discussing how to remedy this problem. For one, the slice of

New idea: Flank roll atop potatoes

toast was too big. Setting any meat on a toast that size means 2 to 4 bites - large for my purpose. I will make small diameter baguettes to fit my need. (In fact I made a starter batter already to that end.) I will make the baguettes, hopefully, about 1½-inch in diameter, making a tiny bite when sliced. Instead of a flat slice of flank steak, I am planning to use sirloin, cut into cubes. I will pipe the rosette of potatoes onto the bread, and set the cube of meat on top of the potatoes. Hopefully this will make small enough bites to make them easier to eat. 

If you can find dried porcini mushrooms, I would truly recommend making the Porcini & Coffee Rub for Beef (Flank Steak, thick sliced Strip Steak, to coat a Rib Eye Roast, etc). The flavors were stupendous, though I could not truly taste the coffee. I may try this using espresso powder when making again.

Porcini & Coffee Rub for Beef 

Makes enough for 2 flank steaks

1 ounce dried porcini mushrooms
1 - 2 Starbuck's "VIA" instant coffee, French Roast or Bold
2 tablespoons dried onion flakes
1 tablespoon alder-smoked sea salt, or other salt of choice
1 tablespoon black peppercorns 
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon ancho chile powder (more if desired)

Grind the mushrooms in a coffee grinder used only for spices. Remove to a clean jar. Place the alder smoked salt (usually in larger crystals), the peppercorns and the onion flakes in the spice grinder until fine. Add these to the porcini powder along with the coffee powder, sugar, garlic powder and ancho powder. Cover the jar and shake to combine the ingredients thoroughly. Sprinkle onto each side of the steak and press in well. Cover tightly and refrigerate overnight before proceeding with your recipe.

For flank steak, I set a rack under the broiler so the meat will be about 4-inches from the element and broil for 6 minutes per side. Tent with foil for 15 minutes before slicing thinly, at a strong diagonal, across the grain of the meat.


My passion is teaching people how to create a harmony of flavors with their cooking, and passing along my love and joy of food, both simple or exotic, plain or fancy. I continue my journey in ethnic and domestic cuisines, continuing my journey to explore diverse culinary experiences and hopefully to start you on a journey of your own. Join me also at A Harmony of Flavors on Facebook, and Pinterest.

Salt of the Earth

I recently published an article about salt; the good, the bad and the ugly. Plain old table salt, like many other food substances we ingest daily, is mass produced and marketed after subjecting what was once a natural product to processes that leave it in a state the body doesn't even recognize as salt. The body reacts to this no-longer-salt product by rushing a water cushion to surround every particle, trying to protect the body from this unknown substance. And meanwhile, the body is craving salt - of the real variety. Purely my own beliefs. I am no doctor or nutritionist.

Some years back, I started having problems with leg swelling.  At least, that was where it was most noticeable, though I was swelling over most of my body.  I tried all sorts of natural diuretics, all with ingredients that would reduce swelling, and they worked, to a point.  The problem was that I kept right on using good old salt from those mass produced canisters from the grocery store, blithely unaware that this was a large part of my problem. This was back in the late 1990s, and somewhere I learned about this process our table salt is subjected to, and looked for natural sea salt as a substitute.  Sea salt was much harder to find back then, but I learned about "Real Salt", which is mined naturally in Utah, from a dried up sea bed. I ordered some and immediately noticed a difference as the swelling went down dramatically. I was just truly amazed!

These days so many varieties of good quality sea salts are available. We have orange colored Palm Island sea salt, Black Hawaiian Lava sea salt, and pink Himalayan sea salt, to name a few. The colors are due to the many trace minerals found with the salts, and also where they are collected. Obviously the Hawaiian Black Lava Salt is influenced by the black lava which is the entire basis of those islands. There are multitudes of countries that produce sea salt naturally, and many of these have differing crystal structures. Some are flat crystals, some are rounder and some more conical. Some are meant more as a finishing salt, to be added just before consumption, although if food is properly seasoned it needs nothing more to finish it off.

I once purchased a box of a dozen or more tiny containers of sea salts from around the world; Israel, Great Britain, France, Australia and many other countries. In the last few years flavored salts have become available. Smoked salts, such as alder smoked (also called "Salish") or hickory smoked, have their distinct place. Others such as lemon, balsamic or chardonnay flavored salts can be used in specific dishes.

While salt was not the only problem underlying my swelling issue, it was certainly a large contributor. I can now buy Real Salt in the bulk bin section of my local health food store, making it far easier to keep it on hand for daily use in cooking or baking, but even before, seeing how much better I felt when using good quality salt, I would just never go back. My husband and I got really interested in salt of many kinds, and he started finding flavored salts and smoked salts. We had so many varieties that I finally bought this tower to have many types right at hand. They are labeled on the other side! I would never be able to distinguish just from looking, between some of the smoked salts, otherwise.

If swelling is an issue, or you are looking for a more natural product or just like to try new things, look for good sea salts from around the world.


My passion is to teach people how to create a harmony of flavors with their cooking, and help pass along my love and joy of food, both simple and exotic, plain or fancy. I continue my journey in ethnic and domestic cuisines, trying new things weekly. Join me at A Harmony of Flavors on Facebook and Pinterest.