USA

USA! USA! USA!

Sorry, now that I have that out of my system, this week takes me home. Or rather to my homeland, the United States of America.

Overall this weeks menu felt very Californian inspired. Kale Salad? Mexican style salad? We may as well just call it California on a plate. Except for mac and cheese. Mac and cheese is a hearty American classic and one of my favs.

I also decided (since I am a glutton for punishment) that I would also make the avocado ice cream I had meant to make last Sunday while the power was out.

I learned from my mistakes last week and decided to start early (you never know if the power will go out!) at the end with dessert which was a chocolate tart.

You wouldn't think of NZ as being the home of great chocolate, but there are some great brands and I love Whittakers. For the chocolate tart I opted to use 62% cocoa chocolate. I followed the recipe for the dough, but to be honest, I would have liked more walnuts in it and think you could easily add more in when making it. Or alternatively, skip the flour dough and make a nut crust. Something like...

Lindsay's nut crust

Ingredients

1. Almonds

2. Walnuts

3. Handful of dates (medojol or normal softened dates )

4. dash of cinnamon

1. Blender/food process all ingredients until clumps form. Spread into the pan and press down to form the crust.

But we'll go back to the cake later....

Up first...

Entree: Kale Salad

I opted to use curly kale which was taste and I add a little bit of lemon juice to the dressing.

I think this salad would go great with orange segments (or mandarin pieces). 

While I was working on the salad I tasked my sous chef with the ice cream.

The other salad on the menu was a tex mex salad.

Entree: Tangy black bean and corn salad

This salad is eerily close to a personal favorite of mine, called "The Shannon salad" after my friend Shannon who introduced me to it.

Her version includes grated carrots, green peppers (not just the red this recipe calls for), and shallots.

The main dish was mac and cheese. Except veganised. Thing is, I'm not a vegan. I am about as far away from a vegan as a vegetarian can be. Some might say I have a cheese addiction (I would choose to say it's a cheese appreciation lifestyle). In any event the idea of making mac and cheese with no cheese (or dairy) was just too much for me. So i did the following substitutions with the recipe

-Butter for vegan butter

-milk for water

-a large cup of cheese (I did a 50/50 split of mozzarella and low fat cheddar)

I honestly did look for "nutritional yeast flakes" out of curiosity. But I could only find standard yeast/breadmakers yeast. I suspect somewhere like Huckleberry Farms or Wise Cicada would stock them, but I don't think I suffered by omitting them from the recipe. I also would not have thought to use tumeric in the recipe. Yum.

2 salads, 1 main, 2 desserts and just Matt and I.

I paired everything with a nice NZ sauv blanc which complemented the tangy-ness of the mac and cheese perfectly.

And let's not forget the dessert. This was divine! I think that the chocolate tart would be amazing with some chili mixed in. Served with the avocado ice cream to cut through the creamy-ness this would be Mexican food heaven (the nut base above instead of the flour base in the recipe might also provide a good crunch and some texture to the dish).

All in all, cooking for the US was a blast. I thoroughly loved the food and the company I shared it with.