Appetizers » Dinner Dot

America’s Test Kitchen: Crab Towers with Avocado & Gazpacho Salsas

This dish is something I made a number of years ago, but as spring rolls (no pun intended) in it got me to thinking this would be a nice salad/starter to try again. I originally saw this recipe in the America’s Test Kitchen cookbook series entitled “Restaurant Favorites at Home”. This book is interesting because they talked with some of the great restaurants, picked a signature dish, and then tried to simplify it to make it more accessible to the rest of us while maintaining the best of the original character. This recipe was adapted from the Crab Tower Timbale from the Mayflower Park Hotel in Seattle Washington.

If you have an America’s Test Kitchen membership you can access the recipe at:

http://www.americastestkitchen.com/recipes/detail.php?docid=6447&extcode=M**ASCA00

I hate to see it, but when I did a Google search on this recipe I found many pages with the exact same list of ingredients, the same name, and even the same instructions, but no mention that this recipe originated from America’s Test Kitchen. I really respect ATK’s work and there should be no question where I got this and I hope that my tutorial can add some value to the great work they have done. Please visit their site and watch their TV shows which are mostly broadcast on PBS stations.

Crabmeat Salad

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon champagne vinegar
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest or minced
½ teaspoon Dijon mustard
½ teaspoon table salt
⅛ teaspoon ground black pepper
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
12 ounces lump crabmeat (or backfin), preferably Atlantic blue crabmeat, carefully picked over for shell fragments

Gazpacho Salsa

1 yellow bell pepper , cored, seeded, and cut into ⅛-inch pieces (about ½ cup)
½ small cucumber , peeled if desired, seeded, and cut into ⅛-inch pieces (about ½ cup)
1 medium plum tomato , cored, seeded, and cut into ⅛-inch pieces (about ½ cup)
1 small rib celery , cut into ⅛-inch pieces (about ½ cup)
½ small red onion , minced (about ¼ cup)
½ small jalapeño chile , stemmed, seeded, and minced
1 tablespoon minced fresh cilantro leaves
¾ teaspoon table salt
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon sherry vinegar

Avocado Salsa

3 avocados (ripe), cut into ¼-inch dice
¼ teaspoon ground coriander
½ teaspoon table salt
½ teaspoon ground black pepper
2 tablespoons lime juice from 1 lime

Garnish

1 cup frisée
2 oranges , peeled using a paring knife and segmented

As you can see, this recipe is broken down into three distinct components. First, we’ll make the crabmeat salad. Then we’ll prep the gazpacho salsa. Finally we’ll do the Avocado Salsa since the avocado is component that will lose its freshness fastest.

Crab Meat Salad

Whisk together the olive oil, champagne vinegar, lemon zest, mustard, salt and pepper together in a small bowl.

Then measure 3 tbsp of this mixture into a medium bowl (this is going to be bowl you mix in the crab meat). Three tbsp will not be all of the original mixture, but it will be quite a bit of it. Now add the mayonnaise and whisk together.

Now add the crab meat to this dressing and thoroughly mix it together and set aside.

An important word is in order at this point…or more accurately before you ever buy the crab meat. Buy the best lump crab meat you can. Much of the canned crab meat you might find in a “regular” grocery store, even if it says “reserve” or “premium” is often not nearly as sweet as this dish deserves. If you have access to King Crab legs at your local Costco or fish counter, that would be a wonderful way to get the crab meat. Otherwise, if you’re paying $3-$5 for a 6 oz can of “premium” lump crab meat then I can assure you that you will be disappointed with the taste. Cheap crab meat can be bitter and even metallic tasting. If you buy the best in a can you might pay upwards of $20-$30 for 10 – 12 oz. Make sure you have a lot of appreciative friends and buying the best will be worth it.

Gazpacho Salsa

Now we’ll move on to what is the most time consuming part of this dish and that is prepping the gazpacho salsa. Like many things that take time in cooking this one takes time because of the chopping involved. If you’re good with your knife then you’ll cruise through this. If you’re not, then, well, hang in there and get some experience.

The one thing I don’t like about this recipe is that to make this salsa you need a little bit of a lot of things. You’ll use just a little of the jalapeno, a bit of the onion, some of the cucumber, and so on. Save all the leftovers and just cut those up in whatever size you want with whatever mix is left over. Mix it together, throw some olive oil, salt, and pepper on it and you’ll have yourself the kitchen staff’s version of gazpacho salsa for leftovers.

Refer back to the recipe at the top for quantities, but I went ahead and separated all the ingredients and took a photo of it so you could see how large or small I cut the pieces. In a gazpacho like this you are going to want to cut things into a pretty small dice because this sits as a small package on top of the tower. You want all the flavors to come together and for it to look easy to get on your fork. There should be no stabbing involved in eating this dish.

Once all the vegetables and herbs are chopped, mix them together in a bowl along with the sherry vinegar (yellow bell pepper, cucumber, tomato, celery, red onion, jalapeno, cilantro, salt, pepper, olive oil.) Set it aside so it can start to marinate and marry its flavors together.

Avocado Salsa

The final prep step is to make the avocado salsa. This component will form the base of the tower.

If you’ve never prepared an avocado I’ve located a YouTube video that Epicurious did that quickly shows you what to do.

Epicurious on YouTube – cleaning an avocado

The video shows how to prep the avocado to come out in slices. Simply make cuts in the 90 direction on top of the long direction and you’ll be able to spoon out already diced avocado. Note that the distance between the cuts will define how chunky the avocado salsa is. You don’t want it to be too chunky because you want it to fill the bottom of the form. But if you cut it up too fine you will lose the visual appeal and it will be more of mash similar to guacamole. Take a look at the pictures below and you’ll get the idea.

Spoon out the diced avocado into a medium bowl. Mix it with the ground coriander, salt, pepper, and lime juice. The lime juice is acidic and will help maintain the nice green color of the avocado. Otherwise when avocado is exposed to air it will eventually turn brown, much like an apple.

The Final Assembly

In the final assembly we need a form that is the right diameter. I have a selection of biscuit cutters and chose one that is about 3″ in diameter. As a kid growing up in northeastern Colorado, I saw some grain storage silos being built with concrete. They started at the ground with a circular form that was nowhere near the height of the eventual silo. They poured it full of concrete and as the concrete set up they constantly moved the form higher, pouring more concrete as they went. Building the crab tower is similar.

Spoon in about 1/3 of a cup of the avocado salsa inside the form onto the bottom of the serving plate. Use the back of a spoon to lightly tamp down the avocado so that it fills in the form and creates a level surface for the next layer.

Carefully lift the form straight up, but not off of the avocado salsa layer. You may need to hold the form in place while you spoon 1/3 of a cup of the crab salad mixture on top of the avocado salsa. Again, use the back of a spoon to lightly tamp the crab salad in place and form a level surface for the next layer. (Of course I forgot to take a picture of this step. :-0 )

Continue by lifting the form up further, if you need to, in order to spoon 1/3 of a cup of the gazpacho salsa on top of the crab salad. You may want to lightly reposition some of the salsa so that it’s even, but there is no need to tamp this layer down. In fact you want it to look “fluffy” and light.

Completely remove the form now and you will have the crab tower and it’s now ready for garnish. America’s Test Kitchen garnished this dish with some frisee lettuce dressed with some of the remaining vinaigrette that you made in the first steps. My store wasn’t carrying frisee at the time and I chose to use pea sprouts instead with, I think, great results. Also, America’s Test Kitchen also arranged a few orange segments on the plate around the tower, which I did not try but I think it is a great idea. Once you’ve done one of these the rest will go quickly.

What did I learn?

- Get the best possible crab meat you can. If you are not sure about the quality of the crab meat then I would highly recommend you switch to a good quality prawn which might be easier to find. Clean and boil the prawn and then dice it fairly small. Also, this dish could be really good with a sushi grade Ahi tuna. I will probably try that next time because I love Ahi and the deep red meat would make for interesting visual appeal too. And of course if you’re from Boston and in the middle of lobster season this would be a great place to use some fresh lobster.

- This dish, if prepared in a large enough portion, can be used as a main dish. But it’s probably best as a fresh and hearty appetizer.

- What about make-ahead? You could definitely mix the crab salad hours ahead of time. The gazpacho salsa could also be made hours ahead of time and in fact might even be better after it has marinated for a while. I would be less inclined to do the avocado salsa ahead of time, but it is really not a time consuming part of the dish to prepare and so it’s conceivable you can prepare that right before you’re ready to plate.

- Use the leftovers creatively. Chop up the rest of the vegetables into a fresh vegetable salad. Any leftover components from the crab towers can be mixed together to make a very spunky crab salad for use later on a sandwich or lettuce salad.

Let me know what you think.

Bon Appétit: Potato, Greens, and Goat Cheese Quesadillas

This recipe is a favorite that I haven’t used often enough. As with most things quesadilla related, there is a wide range of creative things you can do with one. This recipe is full of flavor and hearty enough to be a meal by itself or fulfill the appetizer role as well. This article is attempting to follow the Bon Appétit recipe found at the URL below on Epicurious. My deviations (deviance some might say) comes from either not finding the exact ingredients or just going off course for the heck of it.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Potato-Greens-and-Goat-Cheese-Quesadillas-241607

The recipe calls for mustard greens which my local stores don’t carry. I love Swiss chard and so I have substituted this nutritious leafy green instead. I only noticed now when looking at this photo that I had purchased light sour cream…wow, didn’t mean to do that. Have to say I didn’t actually notice…hmmm…must be slipping in my old age.

I bought this particular log of goat cheese because by the time I found it I realized the crumbled goat cheese was all the way on the other side of the store and I was just a bit too interested in leaving. This was a great tasting cheese though and so I wasn’t disappointed. I’m sure you could use prepared crumbled feta and be quite happy.

I washed the chard very well while it was still in leaf form. Then I did a rough chop on it and rinsed it again and dried it in a salad spinner. The recipe called for 4 2/3 cups of coarsly chopped stemmed mustard greens and I’m pretty sure this bunch of Swiss chard, when stemmed and chopped, added up to about that. I was not short of greens nor did I have any leftover, so it worked out just right.

Shown is about 1 and 1/3 cups of diced Yukon Gold potatoes. This was almost exactly one potato. When I do this over again I’m going to add about another 1/2 potato as the quesadilla can definitely handle it and I like the extra filling and texture.

The goat cheese log I had was pretty soft. Enough that it wasn’t exactly crumbled in this photo. After I took this shot I actually put this ramekin with the feta into the freezer for about 15-20 minutes. That was just right to firm it up so that later I was able to crumble it as I wanted.

First, add the potatoes to a steaming basket of some type. I’m showing one level of a bamboo steamer which I like to use. You could even do this covered in a small baking dish in the microwave. Many of you will have a stainless steaming basket and that will work great as well.

Let the potatoes steam for about 8 minutes. You don’t want to over cook them because having them just a little bit firm adds to the texture of the dish. Once steamed, transfer them to a bowl and liberally salt and pepper them. Now you need to let them cool down for a while because as soon as they’re cool we’re going to mix in the grated jack pepper cheese. If you have room in your refrigerator you could certainly speed the cooling process up by placing the bowl in your refrigerator for a few minutes.

While you’re waiting for the potatoes to cool down, add 1 1/3 cups of jarred tomatillo salsa to a food processor and then add just 2/3 of a cup of the chopped greens in with it. Process that until the greens are very finely chopped.

After the potatoes have had a chance to cool down, mix in the 2 tsp of chili powder.

Now add the grated pepper jack cheese. Honestly I can’t figure out why they have you do this. I don’t really see a good reason for it. It doesn’t hurt, but it just doesn’t make any sense to me. It’s not like the chili powder or salt and pepper that use the potatoes as their ride around the dish. Here’s what I’m thinking next time…skip the cool down process that the recipe calls for and then just add the pepper jack onto the quesadilla when you’re assembling it. This seems like a superfluous Bon Appétit style step to me making it more complex than it needs to be with no discernible advantage. Perhaps someone will comment to give me some ideas why they would do it this way.

On a flat surface, lay out four 8″ tortillas. Divide the remaining chopped Swiss chard onto each tortilla. Divide the potato/pepper jack mixture over the top of that.

Spoon about two tablespoons of the tomatillo salsa/chard mixture over the top of each tortilla. You will end up with extra that you can use as a side garnish for those who want more. Personally I think I will add a little bit more than the two tablespoons next time.

At this point I took the feta that I had chilling in the freezer and then further crumbled it over the top of each tortilla.

It’s almost a shame that we don’t stop here because this is about as good looking as this dish gets.

In their recipe they have you then fold this onto itself. I would suggest you don’t and proceed to cook this with another tortilla topping it. It’s going to be a lot easier and the ingredients are already plenty thick so that doubling its thickness will only serve to make it harder to eat. Because I cooked these flat, I pulled out my dual burner pancake griddle, heated it up, and added some olive oil to it and spread it around on the griddle. Then I placed two of the filled tortillas at a time on the griddle. As soon as it was down I placed a tortilla over the top of each one and then pressed firmly down on both. Then brush a little more olive oil over the top of each one so that when you flip it you will get the top side crispy and brown too.

Don’t use too high of heat as you’ll want the heat from the griddle to make its way into the middle, enough to melt the pepper jack cheese and put some heat on the goat cheese. If you use the right heat then by the time it’s warm in the middle it will start to have some brown color too. I don’t quite remember how long I gave it. Just use your spatula to pick up and edge for a peek underneath. You’ll know when the right time is. Go ahead and carefully flip it and let it start to brown up on the other side.

Transfer the heated quesadilla to a cutting board. Use your long chef’s knife to cut it into quarters or use a pizza cutter to do it.

In the final photos I transferred the remaining tomatillo/chard salsa to a ramekin. Then I spooned some sour cream into a small bowl and sprinkled a little chili pepper over the top. And of course the last step is adding the quesadilla to the platter.

What have I learned here?

Perhaps the hardest thing to do is to actually get a photograph that makes this look as good as it tastes. The tomatillo salsa is great and it marries well with the potatoes, pepper jack, and chard. As I mentioned above next time I would consider adding more than the two tablespoons of the salsa inside the quesadilla.
Chard is not the most tender leaf in the world. All of the cooking of this leaf happens when you’re warming the quesadilla on the griddle. I like vegetables and greens like this when they are not over cooked. However, you could do a quick saute of the greens prior to adding them to the quesadilla if you want them to be more tender. Also, you can be more aggressive in separating the leaf and stem. The red part of the chard stem is definitely tougher. When you’re prepping this you can easily cut the leaf on each side of the stem and remove almost all of the stem if you want to. You lose some of the nice red color it brings to the dish, but if you don’t like the extra texture then it’s worth it.
Also, next time I will steam a little bit more of the Yukon potato. Having a bit more will give you some more flexibility on how hearty you can make each individual one if you have a big appetite in your crowd.

Let me know how yours turns out.

Barefoot Contessa: Mexican Chicken Soup

While thumbing through several of Ina Garten’s recipes on the Food Network, I came across this recipe and it really looked like it would hit the spot. I have some experience with some of Ina’s soup recipes with one of my all time favorite recipes being her Tomato Basil soup from the Barefoot Contessa cookbook. So despite the completely unappealing picture on the Food Network site I thought I would set out to make a great Mexican chicken soup. (Don’t you think my photo above looks good?)

You can get her original recipe on the Food Network website at:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/mexican-chicken-soup-recipe/index.html

After reading many of the comments on the recipe I decided to take a few of the suggestions and I will point those out as we go along. With the exception of the cilantro, this board shows what all goes into this soup. The shredded sharp cheddar, avocado, and sour cream are for garnish at the end. Black beans are one of the main ingredients I added to this recipe that she didn’t have.

Many of the comments suggested that there could be some bland flavors and so I was on guard for that. Her recipe called for 2-4 jalapeno peppers. The ones I have here are pretty good size. Some readers suggested two was not enough and some thought four was too many. I settled on using three jalapeno peppers and I wasn’t disappointed.

The two ground spices shown are a tsp of ground coriander and a tsp of ground cumin. The tortillas are six white corn tortillas.

Go ahead and preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit to get it ready to bake the chicken. The recipe calls for four split chicken breast. It’s important to get them with the bone still in and the skin still on. This will impart the most flavor into the chicken and help to keep it nice and moist. Many readers decided that spicing the chicken more than the recipe’s salt and pepper was advisable. I coated the bottom of a baking sheet with olive oil and then placed the chicken breasts on the sheet with the skin up and bone down. Drizzle a little olive oil over the skin and rub it around. Generously salt and pepper everything. Then I added a creole seasoning from our local spice shop in Boulder, CO, Savory Spice. It’s a combination of ground onion, garlic, cayenne pepper, thyme, oregano, and a few other ingredients. If you use a different creole seasoning please check the level of salt in it and adjust the salt you put on in addition appropriately.

When the oven is up to temperature place the sheet on the middle rack. The chicken will take between 35 and 40 minutest to cook, so get it going now.

I’m showing you the chopped or shredded version of the ingredients because I think it’s important to see what the size of the chop was. I erred on the side of a fine chop for a number of reasons. One of the reasons is that some readers were trying to add more ingredients in order to build up the body of the soup. If you chop things more finely you will increase the body. The main reason though is that I just felt like there were enough ingredients in this soup that I didn’t want to be eating through big chunks of a lot of things and if there was any question to how much flavor the soup had then chopping things more finely will give up the most possible flavor.

In a large soup pot or Dutch oven, add about 3 tbsp of olive oil to a low to medium hot pan. Add in the celery, carrots, and onions and begin to cook. Celery, carrots, and onions are called “The Trinity” in many kinds of cooking. The French call this “mirepoix” and cooking this combination in olive oil or butter is the base of many great soups. Don’t cook this too fast as you need to give time for the carrots and celery to cook and the onions to just start to carmelize.

After about 10 minutes add in the chopped garlic and stir that in and let it cook for about a minute. Then when the vegetables are soft, add the jalapeno peppers, ground cumin, and ground coriander.

Now it’s time to add most of the liquid and the remaining ingredients. Add the 28 oz can of crushed whole tomato, including the juice. Drop in the uncooked tortilla strips you cut from the six white corn tortillas. Add 2 1/2 qts (2.5 cartons) of your favorite chicken broth. I use the Pacific brand organic chicken broth. Ina calls for 1/4 to 1/2 cup of chopped cilantro. Many people don’t care for the taste of cilantro and I think the recipe was a little conservative on this important Mexican ingredient. I think the next time I do this recipe I might even do 3/4 of a cup of chopped cilantro as it cooks down and nearly disappears in this much liquid. I drained a can of organic black beans and then poured that into the soup. It gives it a bit more body and obviously some good additional protein as well. It certainly doesn’t show up a primary ingredient with this volume.

With 2.5 qts of broth and a 28 oz can of tomatoes there is a lot of soup when you’re done. Unless you have a big family or a large dinner party you will be able to enjoy the left overs.

Mix this all together and bring it up to a boil and then turn the heat down to keep it simmering. I ground in about a tsp of black pepper and then added maybe a 1/2 tbsp of kosher salt at this point. Depending on how salty your chicken broth is you will want to sample the soup often from here on to get it seasoned to your liking. Simmer the soup for 20-30 minutes to allow it to cook and the flavors to mingle.

After about 35 or 40 minutes the chicken breast should be a nice golden brown and the flesh is done. If you have an oven or food thermometer you can check for sure. Even though I pulled these and the internal temp was just over 180, they were still very moist after being allowed to rest and cool. You can certainly do this cooking ahead of time which would allow the meat to cool off making it easier to work with.

After the chicken breasts have cooled down enough to handle them, remove the skin and set it aside on the pan. I do all of this work in the same pan because when I’m done shredding the chicken I want to mop up all the pan flavors. So save yourself some great flavor that can transfer to the soup and do the shredding right on the baking sheet. After the skin is removed, begin pulling apart the breast meat into a size that appeals to you. The size shown here is pretty hearty and will definitely fill a fork, but it’s not so big as to need a knife, and is almost always able to be eaten in one bite or sit on a soup spoon.

Mop the shredded chicken through the pan drippings and transfer to the soup pot. Take the heat off the soup pot and cover.

The white corn tortillas that I bought came in a pack that must have had 50 tortillas in it. We used six chopped up for the soup, but now I have a big pack of tortillas that are going to sit in the fridge for a long time. Instead of using the broken up tortilla chips out of a super market bag of tortilla chips the recipe calls for, consider making your own homemade fried tortilla strips. It will give your soup that professional edge and you’ll feel better about not wasting the tortillas.

I pulled probably 10-12 more tortillas out of the pack and cut them in half and then into thin strips. In a medium size pot add about 1″ of corn oil and bring it up to temperature on a medium to medium high heat. If you have a thermometer you can measure the heat of the oil and if it’s 350 degrees that is a good temperature. If you don’t have a thermometer or you feel like a geek for using one, then just toss one tortilla strip in the oil when you think it might be close to hot enough. It should float and bubble. If it gets brown really quickly then your oil is probably too hot. Once you’re satisfied the oil is a good temperature, throw some of the strips into the pot. Don’t do too many at once as they won’t cook consistently and they could drop the oil temperature enough to make for a more soggy tortilla crisp. You want these things crisp when they come out and are dried.

For each batch, transfer it with a slotted spoon or wire spatula to a plate with paper towels on it. I did several batches and varied the level of done-ness for both color interest as well as flavor interest. The dark brown ones you see have just a little bit of burnt toast taste and are slightly tangy. The lighter ones are just as crispy, but taste more like crisp bread. It’s really up to you. I liked the mix.

Now you have your tortilla crisps ready to go. Slice the avocado in half and twist the two halves to separate one half from the seed. With the blade of your knife, sink the blade part way into the seed and give it a slow firm twist to pop the seed out of the other half. Before you remove the avocado from the skin, use your knife to make 6-8 slices long way through the meat of the avocado with the knife blade just reaching the skin. With a large soup spoon, carefully slip the spoon between the avocado flesh and the skin. Work the spoon around the avocado between the meat and the skin. Once you have the spoon between the skin you can begin to pull the avocado meat out onto a small plate and it will come out pre-sliced and ready to serve. Repeat for the other half of the avocado.

Into your favorite soup bowl, dish up some of the chicken soup. Sprinkle some grated sharp cheddar over the soup and it will begin to melt right away. Place a dab of sour cream right in the middle of the bowl on top of the soup. Carefully place two to three slices of avocado near the sour cream. Top with some crispy tortilla strips and sprinkle some more chopped cilantro over the whole bowl and get prepared to enjoy a really fine bowl of Mexican chicken soup.

Make plenty of extra tortilla crisps. They’re good by themselves, but they also will help keep fresh life in your leftovers too.

This would be a great soup for a small cup as an appetizer, but it’s plenty hearty for a main dish too. We found that the flavors were very well balanced with no one flavor overwhelming or shouting too loud. On the second and third helpings we added some lime juice and also a few dashes of Tabasco sauce. I think it would make good sense to have a bottle of Tobasco on the table for those folks who really want some pop. Although the lime and Tobasco definitely added some more Mexican flavors to the soup, it was really satisfying without it too. As with most soups, it’s not precision cooking and using your own taste is what makes it satisfying for you.

I’m definitely adding this to my list of soups and want to thank Ina for another great recipe.

Dinner Dot

If they do it, so can you

America’s Test Kitchen: Crab Towers with Avocado & Gazpacho Salsas

Crab Meat Salad

Gazpacho Salsa

Avocado Salsa

The Final Assembly

What did I learn?

Bon Appétit: Potato, Greens, and Goat Cheese Quesadillas

Barefoot Contessa: Mexican Chicken Soup

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