Tag Archives: Blue Cheese

Pizza! Caramelized Onions With Roasted Butternut Squash, Blue Cheese, Fried Sage And Parmesan Crisps

On a recent Pizz-Off!, we had three amazing pizzas. Two were made by our friends, and this one was our entry into our competition.  If you are looking for a new way to enjoy the abundance of butternut squash now making its appearance in fall farmers markets, this is it!  I love butternut squash. I have got to find a new way of expressing my pleasure about foods, since I seem to ‘love’ everything. But it really is true. There are very few foods that I don’t absolutely delight it and can’t find a way to work into a tasty meal. That has served me well since I’ve managed to quiet some of Anders initial protests and converted him to many foods that he had previously sworn off: Swiss chard, oxtail, sweet potatoes. Anyway, back to the butternut squash. I think it was about our 7th or 8th pizza night and I was racking my brain trying to come up with a new recipe to serve.  When you have a pizza competition with friends every Friday, with each friend making a different pizza, you begin to stretch creativity. Then I remembered my birthday gift to Anders last year – a cooking class at Sur la Table. For that class, we prepared butternut squash ravioli with fried sage.  It was wonderful-so much so that the following weekend we made our own homemade version.  We haven’t made it since then (an oversight I will have to remedy soon!) So this pizza for me is reminiscent of that meal and combines all the flavors of that meal on a pizza : Butternut squash with fried sage and caramelized onions.

Note: This pizza is a little involved but it’s so worth it. You can prepare some of the ingredients (the squash and the onions) in advance to save time on the day of. I unfortunately thought up this recipe while at work.  With two hours to prepare the ingredients before the guests arrived, I had to shop, roast squash, caramelize onions and the most critical thing – clean the kitchen!  I needed every second of those 2 hours.

Pizza! Caramelized Onions With Roasted Butternut Squash, Blue Cheese, Fried Sage And Parmesan Crisps
Pizza! Caramelized Onions With Roasted Butternut Squash, Blue Cheese, Fried Sage And Parmesan Crisps

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Smoked Salmon Pizza With Garlic Butter Fried Portobello Mushrooms And Parmesan

This was a pizza Anders put together during one of our weekly pizz-off’s, where we wave goodbye to the old week… with a friendly pizza competition amongst friends. The goal is not to win, but to have a great time (and win). Our newfound love for smoked paprika once again manifested itself in a generous sprinkle on top, which has the odd side effect of producing some rather red-tinted photos (for which we apologize). As we were all sitting around the table, sipping red wine like the pro’s, we reminisced about our childhood cardboard-pizzas from the nearby Domino’s or local pizza pusher, and wondered why we didn’t make our own pizzas while in college when it’s really not that hard and so much better.

Smoked Salmon Pizza With Butter Garlic Fried Portobello Mushrooms And Parmesan Wafer thin slices of Lemon, Onion, Stilton Blue Cheese, Smoked Paprika, Tomato Sauce with Honey and Anise
Smoked Salmon Pizza With Butter Garlic Fried Portobello Mushrooms And Parmesan Wafer thin slices of Lemon, Onion, Stilton Blue Cheese, Smoked Paprika, Tomato Sauce with Honey and Anise
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Crazy for Shrimp: Sandwich With Cilantro Lime Shrimp, Red Onions, Black Olives And Pesto

This sandwich is literally a result of a quick raid of our refrigerator. We found some shrimp and olives, the last of our sun dried tomato hummus, and a bit of blue cheese. So, we made a sandwich (of course). You may recognize the cilantro-lime shrimp from earlier sandwiches, as they constitute a quarterly craving. Moving from Denmark to San Diego, one of the things I thoroughly enjoy are the large shrimp. Every shrimp I ate growing up (not many) were tiny, no more than an inch long, and thin to. We did shrimp in numbers, and adding those to a sandwich like this would have taken maybe 25 to 30. It’s such a joy to bite into the larger more succulent shrimp and really taste the meat, although the danish ones are by no means bad at all.

Crazy for Shrimp: Sandwich With Cilantro Lime Shrimp, Red Onions, Black Olives And Pesto
Crazy for Shrimp: Sandwich With Cilantro Lime Shrimp, Red Onions, Black Olives And Pesto

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Figs, Prosciutto, Blue Cheese, and Arugula Sandwich

It’s that time of year in our local farmers’ markets.  Our longer than average spring has given way to summer and with it has come one of the fruits that I only started eating when I moved to California – figs, glorious figs.   There are some fruits whose appearance and tastes you can describe by comparing it to another. But a fig… Nothing tastes like a fig. It just is.  Figs are popping up all over and once again, I am beginning to flirt with the idea of adding a tree to my garden.  Until then though, I have kind friends who help satisfy my cravings by sharing from the bounty of their own gardens.  This sandwich is the result of one such gift – a basket of black mission pigs.

While there are many ways to add figs to your diet, this is by far my favorite. The saltiness of the prosciutto, creaminess of the Cambazola (a soft ripened triple cream blue cheese) and the nuttiness of arugula – what at taste sensation. If ever a sandwich could be described as sensual, then this is it.

Figs Prosciutto Blue Cheese and Arugula Sandwich
Figs Prosciutto Blue Cheese and Arugula Sandwich

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Upside Down Fajita Steak Blue Cheese Avocado Burger

Leftover fajitas can be a wonderful thing ! 🙂

Upside Down Fajita Steak Blue Cheese Avocado Burger
Upside Down Fajita Steak Blue Cheese Avocado Burger

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The Big Bad Wolf Burger

Sometimes a man needs to be a man, and that’s when he makes “The Big Bad Wolf Burger“. Oh yeah, 1/2 pound of patty with basil, cilantro, oven roasted garlic and blue cheese chunks. What a great 4th of July celebration that was. Inspired by the moment, I topped it off with crispy hash browns and a jackfruit/avocado rough guacamole. I can’t even begin to tell you how good this burger is, but this is so far the best burger I’ve had in my life. The jackfruit guacamole sweetness perfectly blends with the spicy mayo, the juicy patty, and the crunchy hash browns. These are the times when I think back to all the missed opportunities of my childhood to celebrate with awesome burgers, the food of men 😉

aThe Big Bad Wolf Burger
The Big Bad Wolf Burger

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Rhapsody In Green: Grilled Zucchini Sandwich

Many of the sandwiches on this blog are the result of a specific plan and shopping trip to realize an idea that one or both of us have. I’ll be sitting at work and have an idea that just must be pursued. More often than not, this means I have to make a trip to the grocery store to purchase one of more of the critical component for the dreamed-up sandwich. Other times, a sandwich just sort of emerges from the ingredients on hand- it’s a case of just opening the refrigerator and pantry doors and letting our creativity run wild. In Jamaica, we have a saying for that: “tun yuh han’ an mek fashion”. I won’t bother providing the literal translation, since, as with all languages, much gets lost in that endeavor. I suppose the nearest English equivalent I can find is: ‘necessity is the mother of invention’. Hmm.. even that attempt seems to dilute the essence of this colloquialism.

Anyway, this sandwich was one result of us making fashion by sleight of hand. The ingredients – pugiliese bread, blue cheese and salsa verde left over from the much-mentioned recent wedding @ and zucchini left unused from recent stir fry.

Rhapsody in green
Rhapsody in green

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Fried Plantain With Blue Cheese Sandwich

I miss plantains. For those who don’t know, it is the larger cousin of the banana. Unlike the banana it is typically cooked before eaten. I suppose one could just peel and eat it like you would a banana, but that would just be… well, wrong. My favorite way to enjoy a plantain is to fry it and simply eat as a side dish. Unfortunately, along with my strong accent, one of the things I lost in moving to San Diego is the ready availability of plantains.

Two weeks ago, I had a meeting in a neighborhood in San Diego known for it’s “ethnic’ population.  Ehem… let me pause here to  continue my fight against the application of this terminology. Why is this term reserved for non-Caucasians alone?   Are they by some miracle of biology without shared cultural heritage that underpins the term ‘ethnicity’? But I digress, linguistic misapplication aside, I was lucky to be in an area of town with a fair share of Vietnamese and Filipino supermarkets.

As I drove through I remembered a plantain dish I once had in a Filipino restaurant many years ago. “Dare I hope?”, I wondered.  I was not disappointed, I came out of the supermarket with a huge green plaintain.  It took about one week to ripen, and the cooked fruit was a key ingredient in Anders’ breakfast last week Saturday.

(The other half found its way in a plantain flambé – my take on the banana flambe, something I am unable to make because of my one-woman boycott of the US commercial banana industry).

Fried Plantain With Blue Cheese Sandwich
Fried Plantain With Blue Cheese Sandwich

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Ciabatta Falafel Sandwich with Roquefort, Red Pepper And Paprika And Roasted Garlic Dressing

Well our kitchen remodel is under way now, and today our old kitchen was reduced to rubble, and placed in a giant container outside the house. We are very excited to get the new one in about 4-6 weeks, and before the demilition began we had the sanity to make a few sandwiches and pizzas to keep things interesting while we await perfection. This weekend we shall attempt some sandwiches made entirely on our BBQ, and look forward to being creating. Until then, this is a little gem we made last week, falafel (great for sandwiches), with a nice homemade yogurt dressing. We hope you enjoy it.

Ciabatta Falafel Sandwich with Red Pepper And Paprika And Roasted Garlic Dressing
Ciabatta Falafel Sandwich with Red Pepper And Paprika And Roasted Garlic Dressing

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Beef Round Steak Sandwich with Cuban-Inspired Dipping Sauce And Blue Cheese

While driving home from an exhausting day shopping for a new kitchen (who knew there were so many options for beveling), we passed Miami Grille. Well, we passed were it used to be before it went out of business. I guess Poway wasn’t the right place for a $15 sandwich place after all (and let’s not forget tax and tips!). Anyway, this gave us a sudden craving for a Cuban sandwiches, which as we neared our home faded into a craving for ‘something Cuban inspired.’

So, browsing the web for a couple of base sauces, we read them, ignored most, and invented our own. We made both a marinade and a dipping sauce, marinated the meat overnight, and put together this sandwich the next day. It was moist, tender, and awesomely garlicky. Love it.

Flank Steak Sandwich with Cuban-Inspired Dipping Sauce And Blue Cheese
Beef Round Steak Sandwich with Cuban-Inspired Dipping Sauce And Blue Cheese

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