Salad | Caliblini Personal Chef's Blog

Colorful spring menu today

By polina, on May 11th, 2013%

From my previous post it may look like my vegetable garden is losing it’s struggle with the local wild life. It is not so. I’m learning to garden in these difficult conditions, and I had some successes. The key is to protect the plants they favor, to plant what the beasts don’t like, or to grow whatever grows faster than they eat it. Most culinary herbs (basil, red sorrel, and dill are the exceptions) don’t seem to interest them. This year, my fava beans are my pride and joy. Fast growing, beautiful plants bear tons of tasty beans, and the only one who is interested is the gopher – and he cannot take them all. Well, he got a couple of plants, but I still have the rest!

Now they are at the peak of their short season, and they go happily into a ragout of fava beans, green beans, and English peas, seasoned with sautéed red onion, garlic, white wine, and good olive oil.

This week I also started cooking with fresh tomatoes again. They are not at their best yet, but after roasting the flavor gets more concentrated, and they make a good roasted tomato soup.

On the menu today:

Roasted tomato soup with pasta

Mushroom, ricotta, and spring onion tartlets
Tangy macaroni salad

Zucchini and carrot “spaghetti” primavera

Duck legs roasted with sweet onions, lemon, and olives
Herbed new potatoes

Lamb chops, chimichurri sauce
Fresh peas and beans ragout

Emerald-green goodness of fava beans and English peas bring the spring to the table.

This isn’t your orthodox spaghetti primavera. The “noodles” are cut out of Nantes carrots and zucchini with a julienne peeler, then steamed briefly and topped with a spring vegetables medley. I first developed this technique for a client who cannot eat any grains – I wanted to make a pasta for her. Then I realized that anyone who wants a vegan dish would probably enjoy it.

Today’s client, a mother of two, gets a little bunch of edible chive flowers for the Mother’s Day on her lamb chops.

Wild mushrooms sautéed with thyme and garlic, and thinly sliced spring onions, top these classic puff pastry ricotta tartlets.

What I bought as packaged “duck legs” in a Chinese grocery store turned out to be whole duck leg quarters! Good. More duck. First, cooked in a skillet, skin side down, to render the fat and to crisp the skin; then, slow-roasted in the oven on top of sweet onion slices, with lemon, rosemary, thyme, and white wine. Garnished with olives.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Cupertino, CA

Small menu for my San Francisco clients

By polina, on October 25th, 2011%

Soup
Butternut squash with chai spices

Salad
Roast beets vinaigrette

Main
Burgundy beef stew

Side
Acorn squash stuffed with quinoa and vegetables

Cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger, “warm” spices traditionally used in chai tea, bring out the sweet, nutty flavor of butternut squash perfectly. Add a dash of Tabasco to kick up the flavor, and rind and juice of one orange to compliment the aroma.

My beet vinaigrette salad is based on a traditional Russian salad of boiled beets, carrots, and potatoes, cut into small dice and mixed with cubed pickles and red onions, and vinaigrette dressing. Then I do everything differently. Slice red onion into thinnest half-rings. Rinse with cold water, drain, toss with sherry vinegar, let marinate for 10-15 minutes. Roast the beets to preserve the vitamins and intensify the flavor. Peel and slice into thin wide slices. Boil unpeeled carrots, let cool a little, peel, slice thinly on diagonal. Forget potatoes and pickles. Season still warm vegetables with sea salt, fresh ground black pepper, good olive oil, and a dash of truffle oil. Mix with marinated onions, serve on bed of mixed baby greens.

When you cut an acorn squash in halves lengthwise and remove the seeds, it forms two perfect cups that ask to be filled with some savory stuffing. I filled mine with quinoa pilaf made with sautéed onion, garlic, and carrots, and seasoned with a little hot sauce, topped each with a pat of butter, placed them in a roasting pan with a little water added, covered with aluminum foil, and baked about 30 minutes in a 375 degrees oven.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:San Francisco, CA

Healthy Cooking Demo Menu

By polina, on October 4th, 2011%

This year I will be doing a healthy cooking demo at corporate health and wellness fairs again.

Here is what I will be cooking this week:

Cucumber salad with yogurt and mint

Shrimp with mango-basil dipping sauce

Back to school special: kid’s lunches

By polina, on August 29th, 2011%

This September, I am offering to make lunches for your kid to take to school, at no additional charge. With each family meal service, I will prepare and package five lunch boxes for the week. The choices may include:

- Fruit salad

- Whole-grain pasta salad

- Turkey and cheese sandwich

- Cucumber and tomato sandwich

- Grilled vegetables

- Roast chicken

- You tell me whatever your kid likes to eat…

The best way to pack your kid’s lunch is in an insulated lunch bag, with an ice pack to keep it at a safe temperature. I can bring you a cute lunch bag and an ice pack (a small refundable deposit applies). Add a small cartoon of fruit juice or milk, and a bag of dried fruits and nuts to munch on.

Later in the season, as the weather cools down, consider sending the kid to school with an insulated jar of hot soup or stew.

What I love about being a personal chef #5: Dinner parties

By polina, on June 1st, 2011%

I get to go to all the parties, and I get paid for this!

The regular personal chef service, cooking weekly family meals, is a lonely job. After interviewing the client about their dietary needs and preferences, I sometimes work for them for months without meeting them. The main reason why they need a personal chef is that they are busy people, right? So when I come with my culinary mission, they are rarely home, and when they are, they are busy in the home office or taking care of the kids, and don’t have time to stop in the kitchen and chat with the chef. It’s fine with me: I love my independence, peace and quiet, and being in full control of the kitchen.

But we all need some social moments, and for me cooking for home dinner parties and conducting interactive dinners and private cooking classes means exactly that. Meeting fellow humans, in their best, relaxed and happy form.

Most modern houses and apartments, fortunately, have open kitchens, so I get to enjoy the party and interact with the guests, share recipes and cooking tips and do a little tasting, while I prepare a special dinner for them.

Also, dinner parties give me an opportunity to practice nice food presentation, while in the regular meal service the presentation options are limited by storage requirements. A meal vacuum-packaged in a rectangular Pyrex dish for storage in the freezer can look beautiful, but I challenge you to make it look striking.

Pictured here is daikon and zucchini salad with lemon dressing that I made for a dinner party for a small San Francisco social media start-up today. This salad is very light and refreshing. It’s also low on calories, vegan, raw, and gluten-free, so everyone, no matter what their diet is, can enjoy it. The choice of a sharper or a fruitier olive oil for the dressing can take it in different directions.

Daikon and Zucchini Ribbon Salad with Lemon Dressing
Serves 6

grated zest and juice of 2 lemons
1 shallot, minced
1 cup olive oil
1 large daikon (Japanese radish), peeled
3 very fresh and tender zucchini
6 large basil leaves
sea salt, freshly ground black pepper

Make the dressing: cover minced shallot with lemon juice, let sit for a few minutes. Add olive oil and whisk together.

Using vegetable peeler, shave daikon and zucchinis into paper-thin ribbons. Arrange on six salad plates. Rub basil leaves gently with olive oil to prevent darkening from contact with air. Roll the leaves together, and slice them very thin. Unroll the basil – you’ll have very thin basil ribbons. Scatter grated lemon zest and basil ribbons on top of the salad. Pour dressing over salad. Season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately.

Another raw treat for the same party – raw berry crisp, slightly modified from the recipe on Whole Foods website.

Cherries, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries; blue agave and maple syrup, date-pecan-almond topping.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

What I love about being a personal chef #8: Beauty of the food

By polina, on March 21st, 2011%

My day starts with a glorious display of local seasonal ingredients of the best quality, not unlike an old Dutch still life, and it ends with a week worth of family meals, neatly arranged in the refrigerator in convenient containers, ready to be served on a minute notice.

As a personal chef, I am in a unique position to create a new menu every day, according to the client tastes and dietary goals, and to select only the best, freshest meats and vegetables from the quality supermarkets and the farmers market. Unlike restaurant chefs, we are not restricted by a set menu, or by a profit margin built into each dish. Since the client pays for the groceries, we are free to select what the client wants, and he or she usually wants the best, not the cheapest (within reason). The economy for the client is achieved by selecting what’s in season, and by efficient shopping, preparation and storage of the food, without sacrificing quality.

Using the choice ingredients increases the sensual enjoyment of the cooking process for the chef, as well as taste and health benefits for the client.

In this post I used photos made with my iPhone during a cook date for my Mill Valley client.

The menu:

Soup:

Tuscan bean and kale

Salad:

Arugula with blood orange and caramelized walnuts

Entrees:

Salmon steaks with green sauce

Chicken saltimbocca

Braised lamb shanks

Pork chops with orange sauce

Sides:

Haricot vert (French green beans with garlic and lemon)

Quinoa with mushrooms

Rosemary roasted fingerling potatoes

Vegetable paprikash

Cooking in Burlingame

By polina, on February 25th, 2011%

MENU

Soup:

            Beets with white beans

Salad:

            Beet salad with grapefruit and romaine

Entrees:

           Garlic and lemon shrimp

            Bison meatballs with sage tomato sauce

            Cuban style brisket (ropa vieja)

            Lamb chops with goat cheese sauce

Sides:

            Sweet potato and carrot puree

            Buckwheat kasha

            Brussels sprouts with lemon and garlic

            Prosciutto wrapped asparagus

Bison meatballs

The majority of recipes in this service are adapted from Whole Foods website. I access them through their iPad application, and I am very happy with both the easy to use application and the variety of healthy recipes that are easy to fine-tune to particular clients requirements. The meatballs are made with packaged groung bison meat, seasoned with soy and worcestershire sauces, eggs and Panko breadcrumbs, browned in olive oil, then simmered in tomato sauce made with fresh sage, white wine, and red pepper flakes

The kasha recipe is my own. I brought it with me from Russia many years ago, then adapted it to California ingredients. The secret here is to use buckwheat imported from Russia or Poland, that can be found in Eastern-European grocery stores – it is less processed that the supermarket brands, so the grains stay whole and hold their texture well during cooking. I saute thinly sliced onions and shitake mushrooms in half olive oil and half butter, add rinsed buckwheat and two cups of water for each cup of buckwheat, season with sea salt, bring to a boil, cover, and simmer over low heat until kasha is cooked, 20-25 minutes.

Ropa vieja

The “Cuban” brisket recipe from Whole Foods doesn’t sound very authentic, but my clients love it anyway. It works even for the client who cannot stand onions and celery: there is enough flavor from the spices, raisins, and olives. The balance of sweet, salty, and spicy is perfect.

Cooking with a view: 4×6 service in Mill Valley today

By polina, on October 5th, 2010%

: Braised pork shoulder with Caribbean spices, cooling with a view

- Caprece salad

- Cream of broccoli soup with almonds

- Five-spice glazed salmon

- Beef braciola with mozzarella and basil

- Caribbean braised pork shoulder

- Chicken paprikash

- Seasame green beans

- Roasted Brussels sprouts with lemon and parmigniano

- Sauteed eggplant

- Sweet potato puree with scallions

: Braised pork shoulder with Caribbean spices

Menu: 3×6 service on Monday for a new client in San Carlos

By polina, on September 16th, 2010%

Salad:

Caprese salad with heirloom tomatoes

Entrees:

Roasted Cornish hens with rosemary and thyme

Pork chops with ginger peach sauce

Beef carbonnade

Sides:

Garlic “smashed” potatoes

Quinoa pilaf with mushrooms

Roasted tomatoes

———————————–

I found out why my cookdates has been so long. I blame the soups. I always try to make the soups interesting and unique; as a result, I add almost two hours to each work day! The new client didn’t care for a soup. I was done by 2:30, free to explore kitchen and grocery stores the rest of the day.

These clients live in a couple of block from County Restaurant Supply store. If they decide to hire me on a regular basis, I should be careful not to spend all my earnings right away!