Smoked Salmon Blueberry Salad, by Robert Fuller
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Now, I really shouldn’t have to say a blessed thing more about this. I mean, you get the picture(s), don’t you?
But if you’ve done your fair share of browsing through various parts of The Fuller Zone, then you probably know me better than that—don’t you?
There was one time in the past few years where I wrote my usual overly-verbose email to my oldest brother, and his terse reply was simply, “I’m not that wordy.” Now that’s straight and to the point—if not a bit off-putting or dismissive.
Yet the pictures themselves don’t necessarily tell the whole story.
There’s the very real issue, for instance, that maybe you can’t find all of these exact ingredients.
And then there’s my usual canard about getting the proportions more or less right.
Now, you can always check out how the final dish looks (in the first picture), and kind of eyeball how much of each ingredient you think you might want to use. Or you can put on your experimenter’s cap and just wing it.
But in any case, here’s a rough idea of how much to use of what:
2-3 oz lemon pepper smoked salmon
A handful of fresh blueberries (maybe 1-3 oz)
About 1 oz each of the French soft sheep milk cheese, the cranberry cinnamon goat cheese, the marbled Muenster cheese, and the merlot Bellavitano® cheese (don’t you love how that ®olls off the tongue?)
Start with a bed of the smoked salmon, shredded or cut into small to medium pieces. Add the various cheeses in turn, crumbling or cutting them into small pieces. Then top it all off with your preferred portion of fresh blueberries.
Couldn’t be simpler!
In the event that you are unable to find the lemon pepper smoked salmon, you should be able to find ready-to-eat smoked salmon of some description. And you can always doll it up with lemon and pepper on your own.
Also, as I’ve already suggested, there’s a good chance you may not be able to find all four of these exact, very fine cheeses.
So, to the extent possible, try to procure cheeses that are similar in nature to the ones listed. I highly recommend, for example, that you get your hands on some type of cheese that’s been infused with red wine. (I’ve had one, for example, that was infused with Cabernet.) I think that sheep’s milk cheese should be fairly easy to find; the one I got is perhaps a bit on the tart side, if that makes sense. And in my experience, a goat’s milk cheese with some kind of berries should be relatively easy to find. The marbled Muenster is rather soft and creamy, and slightly tart, but you should be able to substitute “regular” Muenster if for some reason you can’t get a hold of the marbled Muenster.
Then, on the other hand, you could try your own favorite selection of cheeses, and the number doesn’t have to be four, necessarily. I encourage you to experiment, as you may have already noticed.
In fact, my general philosophy with regard to food preparation and recipes is that the recipe ought to be, perhaps even first and foremost, an inspiration and a jumping-off point for further culinary adventures.
And this particular recipe is so simple that it could easily be morphed into something more elaborate, or something with a completely different flavor and texture profile. The only limit is your own imagination!
Helluva (Halawa) Pineapple Pine Nut Paradise, by Robert Fuller
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I attended Peabody Conservatory of Music, in Baltimore, in the late 70s and early 80s, studying piano with Walter Hautzig, but some of my best buddies were students in classical guitar, with Aaron Shearer.
That is, until Shearer decided to go teach in North Carolina, bringing his whole crew with him. And I’ll have to tell you, I really ended up missing these buddies of mine: Robert Klapp, Anibal Acosta, and a few other characters.
What does any of this have to do with Helluva (Halawa) Pineapple Pine Nut Paradise? That’s what you’re wondering, isn’t it? Okay, so the title of the dish doesn’t mention Pepper; my bad. But if it did, that would make four Ps, wouldn’t it?
You see, along with my classical guitar buddies at Peabody, we were all avid practitioners of what I later referred to as just that: the four Ps. The four what!? Simply these: ping pong, pinball, pool, and Pac-Man.
The lobby of the student dorms at Peabody was the place to be for such fun and games, and we even developed our own lingo around these games. In pinball, there was “hose” (ball through the middle of the flippers without being hit).
There was also “toast”, which was something like the hitting of two upright targets simultaneously, so called because of the “crunching” sound it made.
The early 80s were pretty much the birth of the standalone video game consoles, which you could find in bars, starting, to my recollection, with Asteroids and a few other games. And then there was Pac-Man, followed by Ms. Pac-Man.
Pardon my reminiscing; I got kind of carried away by that. The only real point, aside from nostalgia, was the notion of the four Ps—in this case, Pineapple Rings, Pine Nuts, Black Pepper, and Paradise.
If you get yourself some high-quality dried pineapple rings, cut or tear two or three of them into pieces, you can arrange those on your favorite dessert plate as the bed for this marvelous treat.
Then you can scoop out a few chunks of your pistachio Halawa for the next layer, followed by a handful or two of the pine nuts. (I used raw pine nuts, but your air-roasted efforts would be just as excellent.)
After that, you just sprinkle the desired amount of black pepper over your creation, keeping in mind that, as always, you should post careful attention to the proportions of the various ingredients so as to sculpt the flavor profile to your liking.
Please pardon my joyride down Nostalgia Lane. I just couldn’t resist. The main guys I remember in the four Ps were Robert Klapp, Anibal Acosta, and Ricardo Cabo. They were lots of fun, and excellent classical guitarists.