1. In a large salad bowl, mix together the garlic, lemon juice, salt, and mustard with a fork
2. Add the olive oil and stir with the fork until the dressing is well mixed. (I don’t emulsify the dressing as I feel it gets too heavy and thick.)
3. Add the salad ingredients and toss well.
Visit David Lebovitz’s blog for more great recipes from France
This German Potato Salad with Eggs and hot bacon dressing recipe came from my German family side. Passed down through my mother’s side of the family from Alsace Lorraine. I know it is at least 150 years old, but it could be older. Keep in mind that when my Grandfather made this dish, there were no measurements used, only experienced eye-balling. The amounts are my estimates/adjustments over the years. Feel free to modify whatever doesn’t work for you. – jughandle
My grandfather used the bacon dressing for this dish in several recipes. He made wilted spinach with hot bacon dressing, and “spring tonic” buckwheat pancakes with dandelion greens and hot bacon dressing. It always tasted different, but great.
Couldn’t be easier,
Place all ingredients into a food processor and pulse for 30 sec or until smooth.
Season crabs by dredging in seasoned flour, shaking off excess. Set aside.
In a large skillet over medium high heat, add the oil
saute the crabs until soft, about 2 minutes on each side.
Remove the crabs and set aside.
Add garlic and cook it for 1 minute.
Add the capers and white wine.
Cook until wine has reduced to about 1/2.
Swirl in the butter and the chopped chives.
Return the crabs to the pan and cook until brown, about 1 minute more.
Season with salt, pepper and celery salt.
Plate the crabs
spoon pan sauce over the crabs and garnish
Serve with a hot sauce on the table for those who like it spicy.
One of the best things to eat are soft shell Crabs. I just love the flavor of a nicely sauted crab and the way it’s naturally sweet sea food flavor is enhanced by the melted butter and herbs. But my favorite is a soft shell crab Po Boy sandwich. The crispy fried legs sticking out of toasted French bread or hoagie roll and smothered with Tartar sauce. Delicious
Soft shell crabs are in season from May until September, but if you aren’t near the beach, and even then, you’ll most likely be eating a frozen one. Freezing is not quite as good if the chef doesn’t dry the crab out before cooking. I’ve only had fresh soft shell crab once and it was amazing.
The crab is a Blue Crab that is molting (shedding its shell) in order to grow larger. The crab farmers only have a 1-3 hour window of opportunity to harvest the crabs in the “soft” form by collecting the crabs just before they molt and watching them until the perfect moment. After that the new shell starts to harden. The hardening process can be slowed for fresh soft shells by putting them on ice, but freezing obviously stops the process completely.
To clean the crab before cooking all you need is a sharp pair of scissors. First turn the crab over and find lungs (left picture above), which are a fibrous like tissue right where you might think they are supposed to be. Cut them off. Then look for the apron which is also on the bottom and is hard, cut it and anything that seems too hard to eat off. Finially flip the little guy over (right picture above) and cut off the head and eye section. Pat him dry and you are ready to go.
Look in the frozen sea food section of your store or ask the fish monger, they will point you to the right spot. Many stores carry pre-cleaned crabs or the fish monger can clean them for you. The Prime size is good for sandwiches, but any size will do. The larger ones are easier to clean.
If you can’t find them at your local store, you can also buy 2 dozen small crabs from our Fat Farm Store , or here at the store for 12 crabs totaling 1.5 lbs and have them shipped to your home.
Look for several recipes from frying to sandwiches under the recipe tab – Jughandle
For anyone who has tried to peel a “mess” of tomatoes, potatoes, peaches, apples, bell peppers or any other thin skinned fruit or vegetable. You know, that peeling with a knife or vegetable peeler is not any fun.
Time consuming, not to mention the large amount of the “meat” of the veggie or fruit that is lost in the process.
Blanching is a method of dropping the fruit or vegetable into boiling water for 30 seconds to 1 minute. They are transferred straight into cold or iced water to stop the cooking process. Have you ever gotten a bad sunburn and later your skin peeled off? Well, blanching is a similar process. It is amazing how fast and efficient it is. Completely worth the time it takes to bring a large pot of water to a boil.
To blanch tomatoes; cut a little x on the end opposite the stem. When you put the tomato into the cold water the x will give you small handles to start the peeling. Apples, when making an apple pie, will peel the same way.
Going to “put up” some of those nice bell peppers you grew this year? Blanching them removes that tough thin clear skin that makes the pepper hard to cut and eat. The skin peels right off.
I thought that I would freeze a large batch of white peaches that were so sweet this year. 
Blanching them first quickly removed the skin. It was an easy task to push out the seed and cut the fruit into quarters before filling some freezer bags.
Easy peasy!
If the skin doesn’t easily peel off, almost by itself, increase the time in the boil.
Make sure you cool them in cold water for at least as long as they were in boiling water.
I still catch myself pulling out the potato peeler to quickly skin 3 or 4 potatoes. Any more than that, or if I’m trying to get the skin off of small red potatoes, I most definitely blanch them. – jughandle
They (the proverbial they) say you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. I beg to differ. I’m going to show you how to make the best Balsamic vinegar you ever had (within reason) out of the cheapest balsamic vinegar you can buy.
Considered a wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar is made from un-fermented grape pressings, not wine. The pressings are boiled down to a syrup and aged by rules, hundreds of years old. The real deal balsamic, only made in two provinces of Emilia-Romagna, Modena and Reggio Emilia, is then placed in unsealed oak barrels with a vinegar “mother” and allowed to turn to vinegar. As it ages the mother will reduce the amount of liquid available and that liquid, now vinegar, will be transferred to barrels made from different woods to add to the complexity of the flavor profile over years. This process takes a minimum of 12 years by law and as much as 100. The 100 year aged Grande Vecchio vinegar below has been treated in just such a way.
Balsamic vinegar like the one pictured above goes for $361.00 for 2.4 oz on line. I’m sure it would be amazing, but I can’t afford nor justify spending that much money on vinegar, no matter how good it might be. Good “real” aged balsamic vinegars can be sipped straight from the bottle like a fine liqueur. But wait, there is another process, a more modern process, to make balsamic vinegar that takes hours instead of years, even if it doesn’t qualify as the real thing.
The modern method uses huge presses, heat and adds sugar instead of letting time reduce and concentrate the natural sweetness of the grapes. This grocery store stuff is not to be consumed straight from the bottle in a good crystal glass, but treated properly it can be very nice for dressings and cooking and will cost you less than $6 per liter.
The thing to do is to find a large bottle of nice acidic, sweet, inexpensive grocery store balsamic vinegar and reduce it to a syrup by gently boiling it down for a couple of hours. Just pour the whole bottle into a sauce pan and bring to a slow rolling boil. Make sure you save a little to taste the difference. Reduce by at least 1/2. I bring it down by 3/4. But God knows, don’t burn it. It smells terrible. Let it cool and then use it over meat or in dressings. Taste the difference, you’ll love it. Note: when it cools it will be much thicker. I’d start by reducing only by 1/2 if it is your first try at it.
This isn’t really as important as you might think. Find a nice bottle and try it as I suggested. If it works great, if it doesn’t try another. You’ll only be out $3-6 but when you find the one that works stick with it, you’ll use it a lot.
Farm on, you Fat Farmers let me know what you think – Jughandle
When I first found out what Pesto was and how to make it, I was addicted to it. But, being kind of a literal person I thought that it was the “Food Law” that things such as pesto were supposed to be made the same way each time. Not so much, any more. Now, being old and wise, or at least cheap and lazy, I now make Pesto out of what ever I have in the frig or pantry and I have learned that pesto means anything made by pounding.
I do stick by the basic premise of having a green leafy fresh herb or vegetable, a nut of some kind, cheese of some kind and oil. I don’t always use garlic.
In a marble mortar and with a wooden pestle
Reduce garlic and pine nuts to a cream
Add basil leaves and coarse salt and grind everything to a creamy consistency
Finally add Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese and grind into the mixture adding olive oil to create a paste.
This paste can be refrigerated for a week or frozen for several months in an air tight container.
Traditional pesto is used with pasta of course, but is also an important ingredient in minestrone soup. It is great with tomatoes and potatoes.
Modern Methods:Believe me, I have made pesto the traditional way in a mortar and pestle, but only once. I found the “food processor” and have used it as such ever since.
For a milder flavor try:
Mexican variation:
Try different cheeses, sprouts, broccoli, peanuts, almond nuts and have fun. – Jughandle