Our older son, Dane, typically prefers regular fries over sweet potato ones. However, he will devour an entire plate of sweet potato fries if it is served with this special sauce. So, it was important for me to figure out how to recreate the taste at home.

In the interest of full disclosure, I had a little help (courtesy of one of the nice staff members at their Palo Alto location). The gentleman clued me in to the fact that the main ingredients are buttermilk, mayonnaise, horseradish, paprika and salt.

As far as creating an actual recipes goes though, I was on my own.

I started with one quarter cup buttermilk and one quarter cup mayonnaise. To this, I added a heaping teaspoon of creamy horseradish, a little over a quarter teaspoon of paprika and a generous shake of sea salt. Believe it or not, this was almost it as far as taste matching goes. I ended up with a bit more paprika (for color) and just a bit more salt. These amounts made enough for 4 individual servings (the bowl pictured above is 2 ounces and it was just over half full).

So if you’re craving a new topping for fries, especially sweet potato ones, I encourage you to try this simple recipe at home. Let me know how you like it in the comments below!

Horseradish Mayo:

• 1/4 cup buttermilk
• 1/4 cup mayonnaise
• one heaping teaspoon creamy horseradish
• 3/8 teaspoon ground paprika
• 3/8 teaspoon salt (or to taste)

Mix all ingredients and serve with piping hot sweet potato fries. Enjoy!

I fall in and out of love with certain ingredients as the seasons change but my top five “staples” list has stayed constant for years. What I rely on most (and use nearly every day) are:

1. Lemons (always fresh)
2. Mustard (Dijon and whole grain)
3. Onions (preferably sweet, like Maui or Vidalia)
4. Olive oil
5. Soy sauce

LEMONS: We are lucky to have fresh citrus year round in California. Our four trees are always producing, so a fresh-picked lemon is a quick trip to the garden away. I make SO many things with lemons, it’s hard to ennumerate them: our basic vinaigrette, lemon-Dijon chicken marinade, lemon-olive oil drizzle on ANY steamed or stir-fried green vegetable, lemon juice on crispy smashed potatoes or french fries, lemon on grilled fish, etc.

MUSTARD: I think I use mustard every day, too. It’s the basis for my homemade vinaigrette

http://dirtandsunshine.posterous.com/djion-vinaigrette-step-by-step-by-step

and it seems to make its way into practically every chicken recipe I make (except fried chicken). We especially love Dijon on steamed carrots:

http://dirtandsunshine.posterous.com/carrots-a-la-kathy

ONIONS: My favorite cooking aroma of all time is onions sauteed in olive oil. The scent in the air takes me right to Italy and this combination is the foundation of many amazing meals. We like raw onions in salads (Greek salad and tomato-onion-avocado salad, for example),

http://dirtandsunshine.posterous.com/tomato-avocado-onion-salad

and cooked onions in soups, stews, and pastas:

http://dirtandsunshine.posterous.com/garden-inspired-pasta-pb

OLIVE OIL: I wrote about my family’s intense love of olive oil in ‘dirt&sunshine’. We really do go through several bottles a month, using a Spanish variety from Trader Joe’s for our every day cooking and a rotating selection of the best extra virgin offerings from Italy, Greece and California on salads, soups, pastas, and vegetables. It really is liquid gold to us!

SOY SAUCE: Did you know that many great marinades have a bit of soy sauce for saltiness and texture? It’s surprising how many times it pops up in recipes I find (especially for grilled meats). For our family, it makes the best two-ingredient chicken marinade EVER:

http://dirtandsunshine.posterous.com/two-minute-two-ingredient-chicken-marinade

Try some of these ideas and let me know what you think. Also, what are YOUR top five ingredients? I’m curious!

Tomorrow, I’ll be sharing some fig-olive tapenade with my fellow volunteers at Help-Portrait 2011. It’s an easy, delicious appetizer; the recipe feeds a crowd. Enjoy!

xoxo, kathy

To say my child and husband are obsessed with Ina’s Old Fashioned Potato Salad is a bit of an understatement. First of all, Tate bugged me NON-STOP all week to make it. He even gave up a bit of his precious weekend XBox time to accompany me to the Farmer’s Market yesterday morning.

Last night, he and Paul could not keep their forks out of the large bowl I had made. And I had already served up skinny French fries (!!!) to soak up the juices from our grilled red snapper and heirloom tomato salad dinner. Paul doubling down on a starch should have clued me in. But it wasn’t until he had a serving FOR BREAKFAST that my suspicions were confirmed. Despite a mild complaint about the amount of dill I put in (I love dill), he cannot stay away from it. Forget about “marriage chicken” or other commitment dish you may have heard about, get your guy or girl by making the world’s best potato salad!

Ina has many versions to choose from but I recommend her Old Fashioned Potato Salad. You may find it online here:

http://www.food.com/recipe/ina-gartens-old-fashioned-salad-365727

I do enjoy coming up with marinades or riffing on someone else’s though. Last night, I decided to try a variation of a Julia Child classic (a much easier, faster one I found on the Internet):

3-4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons soy sauce
juice of half a lemon
2 small garlic cloves, finely minced
2 teaspoons fresh rosemary, finely minced

The beauty of this recipe lies in purchasing a rack of lamb (Safeway has a reasonably priced one imported from New Zealand) and separating the riblets with a knife (takes about a minute). Pop the riblets into the marinade for a little bit then grill. They cook really fast so you have to watch them carefully.

The best part is that kids can eat them with their hands; the relatively clean bone (“French style”) makes a huge difference in my opinion.

Enjoy!

I was quite the hit with the school secretaries; I just might have to surprise them one day with a home-cooked lunch. If you’re interested in our recipe (an adaptation of Tom Cruise’s recipe), here it is:

1 lb spaghetti or spaghettoni (thick spaghetti)
1 medium sweet onion (Maui, Vidalia, etc.)
4 oz cubed pancetta
2 tbsp olive oil
2 eggs, beaten w/salt and pepper
2 cups grated parmeggiano reggiano
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Finely dice the onion and cook slowly with the olive oil and pancetta; use low-medium heat and stir frequently. The trick is to caramelize the onion without burning it – this will take about half an hour. Cook pasta according to package directions. Drain then return to pot. Quickly toss the beaten eggs over the hot pasta. Continue tossing until the pasta looks creamy from the egg coating; I usually do this for 3-4 minutes to make sure the eggs are reasonably cooked. Add most of the cheese and toss well. Add onion/pancetta mixture, toss and serve with remaining grated cheese, salt and pepper.

*Kathleen is such a doll and a trouper; our Measure B team wanted to help out a bit while she’s recuperating. It’s the least we can do considering she fell while distributing Measure B door hangers a few weeks ago!

I can’t remember if I mentioned undertaking this activity back in late November. Our neighbor, Robert, came over one day and asked if he could pick some of our olives (FYI, we have a lone tree from McEvoy Ranch in our side yard). Robert said it was very easy to cure them using a brine (water+salt+vinegar). Backyard farmers that we are, we were eager to join him in the endeavor.

The hardest parts were picking the olives (we got covered in dust) and then inspecting them for olive moth larvae (yuck!). It bummed me out we had to reject so many, but we didn’t want our guests to bite into an olive and find a worm! In the end, we only had enough to fill about three of the jars above. We’re thinking they’ll make a perfect amuse bouche at dinner parties. Right?

Brine curing olives takes a lot of time and but little attention. Olives contain a bitter element called oleuropein that needs to be leached out in order to make them edible. Robert had some great notes we followed. Basically, you crack or slice each olive in order to allow the oleuropein to be drawn out by the brine. The directions called for 1/4 cup kosher salt to 4 cups of water plus 1/2 cup vinegar (white, white wine or cider – we used plain white). We filled up the jar and made sure the olives stayed submerged – a ziploc bag of rice worked great. We covered it lightly as directed and put it in a cool dark place. We checked it every week for the first month or so. We also changed the brine every month but did not rinse the residue off the olives. Hint: it acts as a starter, much like yeast.

Then, we waited…

After several months, the olives were ready for flavoring. The directions called for 1/4 cup kosher salt to 4 cups of water. Then we added 1/2 cup white wine vinegar and herbs for flavoring. We choose black peppercorns, fresh rosemary and strips of our homemade preserved lemons. The resultant olives are salty and lemony, with a slight rosemary bouquet. They are fairly small since the tree isn’t that old but Robert assured us they will get bigger over time.

I’m really excited to do it again this fall. If you want to join the harvest and make some of your own, send me an email!

The quantities below will make enough for about 15 people:

5 cups freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 15 oz container frozen raspberry puree*
3 cups sugar (superfine or baker’s is best)
12 cups filtered water

Make a simple syrup by placing 3 cups of water plus 3 cups superfine sugar in a non-stick sauce pan. Boil for about 2 minutes then let cool to room temperature.

Squeeze 5 cups worth of fresh lemons and pour into a large serving container. Add cooled simple syrup, 9 cups of water plus defrosted raspberry puree. Stir well and refrigerate overnight for best results.

*I didn’t have time to make homemade raspberry puree so I purchased ‘Perfect Puree’ at Whole Foods. Not cheap but really good!

Voila! Basil plants are back at Trader Joe’s! We did a major family grocery run on Sunday and found this beautiful plant at TJ’s Los Altos. The first thing Tate said upon seeing it was, “Can we have Dad’s garden pasta now?”

You may recall the last minute pasta my husband threw together in September following our neighborhood’s Harvest Walkabout. It was late, we were hungry and we only had some sausage in the refrigerator. Paul went out to the garden, grabbed a few tomatoes and some basil, then cooked up the sausage with some Maui onion. He tossed uncooked, cut tomatoes and a handful of fresh chopped basil. It was heavenly and is now one of our all-time favorites. It’s best with fresh, ripe tomatoes but you can also use chopped canned ones (or hothouse, which we found at Foothill Produce). The true key element is fresh basil – it pulls this dish together in the most magical way. In case you want to try it yourself, here’s the link to the directions:

http://dirtandsunshine.posterous.com/garden-inspired-pasta-pb

We found some terrific early avocados at Foothill Produce, too, which prompted Dane’s request for his favorite summer salad:

http://dirtandsunshine.posterous.com/tomato-avocado-onion-salad

Dinners like this get us excited about our trip to Italy this summer… Italian-grown Genovese basil here we come!

P.S. Update!! I forgot to announce the winner of the copy of Selma – Becky Davis! Congratulations, Beck!