Matafan - Spice Up your Holiday Breakfast!



Matafan Pancakes with Bacon, Chives, Creme Fraiche & Potato

If you are looking for a way to spice up your holidays this year, Matafan may be the perfect start.   Matafan is a pancake/blini combo that can serve as the base for many great toppings, and is neutral enough in flavor that you can season the pancake batter however you desire.

Potatoes bake on a salt bed to absorb moisture

Fluffy potatoes - the result of a ricer

 It is a fairly easy dish to prepare, but needs a little advance planning since the potatoes bake for two hours.  However, I bet you can get the same result from using leftover mashed potatoes, thus streamlining the process quite a bit.

 

We used the batter in two ways:  sticking with the original recipe for half a batch and then spicing up the other half with chives and bacon.  My personal favorite was the chive and bacon batter.

To serve we garnished with fresh bacon bits, chives, and crème fraiche.

Matafan - A Festive Holiday Breakfast!



The beauty of this recipe is that you can make it ahead of time by either preparing the batter and letting it set overnight to make fresh matafan in the morning, maybe with a little bacon and eggs, or by freezing to keep on hand for unexpected guests, or as an addition to a light lunch of soup or salad.

To read more French Friday with Dorie Experiences on Matafan:

www.frenchfridayswithdorie.com

Matafan is found in Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan on pages 356-357.

Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good

Thanksgiving is around the corner.  Just 29 days until we stuff ourselves with an endless smorgasbord of food and drink, football and family.  It also marks the traditional start of the holiday season. 

But I am as much a Holiday Diva as a Culinary Diva.  So our holiday season starts this weekend when I send Mrs. Claus’ helper in an eighteen foot U-Haul truck to pick up Christmas decorations from a double-wide storage unit.  I know this may seem early, but it takes about three weeks to fully decorate our house and we like to have everything finished by Thanksgiving.  Over the Thanksgiving weekend we celebrate and give thanks for completion of this indomitable task by treating ourselves to exciting holiday dinners, seasonal cocktails, fine wines and the viewing of our favorite Christmas movies. 

Though it looks like a lot of chopping, prep time is really pretty quick

This week’s French Friday’s with Dorie challenge is really timely and produces a veritable showstopper of a dish.  Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good is the holidays personified.  It is like a beautiful package stuffed with a bounty of delectable treasures, and the pumpkin makes a wonderful serving vessel. 

Cream is added to the ingredients

Mix ingredients until moistened

Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good is truly versatile.  It can serve as an accompaniment to the ubiquitous turkey, even substituting for that glutinous glob that frequently masquerades as stuffing.  It can be used as a starch substitute with virtually any meat, fish or fowl.  Or it can be used as an entrée by exchanging rice for the bread ingredient.  If you have vegetarian friends and are at a loss as to what to serve, leave the bacon out and this dish will wow them.  Even Sasha, the Wonder Dog, couldn’t get enough of Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good.

Stuff pumpkin with mixture

Top pumpkin with topand place in oven for 90 minutes

The secret to this dish may be in the slow roasting (2 hours).   The flavors meld together creating a graduated intensity in flavor. I used a combination of Gruyere and Emmenthal cheeses to good effect.  These cheeses provided a richness and nutty flavor that balanced well with  the crispness and saltiness of the bacon, the firmness of the day-old bread soaked in cream, the flavors and aromas emanating from the fresh thyme and chives and the sweetness of the baked pumpkin. 

Remove pumpkin top after 90 minutes and bake for another 20 (my top had popped off)

Piping hot out of the oven, my pumpkin’s burnt orange color was slightly caramelized at the top and contrasted nicely with the stuffing that overflowed down the sides.  This dish was a feast for the eyes and nose and its image deserved to be captured by a professional photographer for the cover of a foodie magazine. 

Voila!  One stunning dish for your holiday table...

This is a must try for the holiday season, or your next dinner party.  This recipe can be found on page 364 of Dorie Greenspan’s Around My French Table.     

Pumpkin slices easily for individual servings

To read other Dorista's French Friday Experiences:

www.frenchfridayswithdorie.com

Rubber Chicken Dinner Alternative

The “Rubber Chicken Dinner” season has begun; let the cheap wine flow!

 Here in the Coachella Valley there are over 900 charities vying for their piece of the charitable-giving pie.  The competition is fierce to see which charity can host the most over-the-top “ball” (a euphemism for an event that forces attendees to wear formal attire to do the same things that can be done in casual attire, while listening to endless speeches).  One thing common to these events is the food:  a watery, limp salad; tasteless, rubbery chicken or beef, or both; vegetables discernable as such only from the menu; and the obligatory chocolate dessert, all accompanied by wines of completely unknown vintners from regions less travelled.  There are so many charitable events like these that before each season my intrepid escort and I negotiate how many and which events he will attend.  Unfortunately for me, the number decreases exponentially each year.

A Culinary Diva likes culinary challenges, but getting through the Rubber Chicken Dinner Season is particularly difficult for me.  I usually avoid the buffet tables and merely nibble for appearance sake during a sit-down dinner ordeal.  So I find it advisable to eat before the event or afterwards and am always looking for something light to accommodate these needs.  As part of the FoodBuzz Tastemaker Program with Marzetti Simply Dressed, I received a complimentary bottle of Marzetti Simply Dressed Salad Dressing.  This gift presented the perfect opportunity to do a little experimentation for some quick and easy dishes for the busy social season ahead of me.

There are ten varieties of Marzetti Simply Dressed Salad Dressing to select from and, trust me, selection is no small task given the wide variety and uniqueness of their salad dressings.  The Marzetti products are made from all-natural ingredients and do not contain preservatives – which is a major plus in my book.  I ended up purchasing four more because they sounded so interesting. 

For my first experiment, I selected the Greek Feta salad dressing made with extra virgin olive oil and sea salt. This salad dressing has a light and creamy texture and will not weigh down your salad like so many creamy dressings do.  I thought this would perfectly compliment the salad’s principal ingredients:  cantaloupe and feta cheese.

This salad was inspired by a local CSA website that featured a recipe with cantaloupe and feta cheese.  Cantaloupe and feta cheese are a natural pairing with the saltiness of the feta cheese working well with the sweet, luscious flavors of the cantaloupe.  But I thought the Marzetti salad dressing could support a broader platform of tastes.  So I chose spicy arugula for the greens and added freshly crisped bacon and cool, refreshing cucumber.  The result is an explosive taste sensation, rather like the image conjured by a Jackson Pollock painting.  This salad can be an appetizer or an entrée.  Either way, it is a showstopper.

 

Cantaloupe, Feta and Arugula Salad

Ingredients:

1 small cantaloupe, seeded and diced

1 small cucumber, peeled, seeded and diced

½ cup crumbled feta cheese

10 Kalamata Olives sliced

4 strips of crisped bacon, crumbled

¼ cup Marzetti Simply Dressed Greek Feta Salad Dressing

1 bag arugula

Place ¼ cup of Marzetti Simply Dressed Greek Feta Salad Dressing in bottom of large bowl.  Add the arugula and toss until coated.   Add in ¾ of the diced cantaloupe, cucumber, feta cheese, olives and bacon to the coated arugula.  Mix well.  

Divide salad into four first course portions or two main course portions.  Garnish with remaining cantaloupe, cucumber, feta, olives and bacon.

We paired the salad with a discovery from a recent trip to Lodi, California.  The Van Ruiten 2008 Reserve Double Barrel Chardonnay accentuated the flavors of the salad.  The wine is light in alcohol at only 12%, has a crispness about it with slightly spicy overtone .

Enjoy!

To locate Marzetti Simply Dressed near you:

www.marzetti.com/where-to-buy/

To explore the Van Ruiten Wines:

www.vrwinery.com