Warm spinach and frisee salad

Spinach salad with bacon is a classic combination. What about a spinach salad with bacon, currants and roasted shallots? That’s not so ordinary.

This recipe from the Mustards Grill Napa Valley Cookbook takes spinach salad to a whole new level. The salad base is spinach and frisee leaves. For a long time, I was ambivalent about frisee – it comes in a lot of the salad blends, but it never really stood out to me. Lately I’ve realized that frisee is quite delicious on its own, and have been incorporating it into my everyday cooking.

The spinach and frisee are tossed in a unique dressing – when you cook the bacon for this salad, reserve some of the fat in the pan. Balsamic vinegar is added to warm bacon fat and reduced a bit to make an intense, syrupy dressing. Bacon, currants and roasted shallots are also added to the mix.

This was truly an outstanding salad. If you roast the shallots in advance, it can be thrown together quite easily.

Warm spinach and frisee salad

Serves 4

Adapted from Mustards Grill Napa Valley Cookbook

6 small shallots, peeled and sliced 1/2 inch thick
2 tsp + 3 T balsamic vinegar
1 T olive oil
3 cups spinach leaves
3 cups frisee leaves
4 slices bacon, sliced crosswise
4 T dried currants
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Combine the shallots with the olive oil and 2 teaspoons of balsamic vinegar in a baking dish. Season with salt and pepper, then roast for 20 minutes, or until the shallots are golden brown and tender. Set aside to cool.

To make the dressing, cook the bacon in a large pan over medium high heat, stirring occasionally, until crisp. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the bacon out of the pan and onto paper towels to drain. Leave 1 tablespoon of bacon fat in the pan, drain off the excess. Pour the 3 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar into the pan and cook over medium heat for 2 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

To assemble, toss the greens with the dressing. Separate the shallots into rings and scatter over the salad. Top with bacon and currants.

Mustards Grill - Braised duck legs

This recipe is from the Mustards Napa Valley Grill cookbook. Duck legs are seared to render the fat and make the skin crispy, and then braised in red wine, chicken stock and vegetables. The sauce was a little too thin, even though I reduced it quite a bit. I served the duck legs over fresh rigatoni with watercress.

Mustards Grill - grilled tuna with moroccan pepper salad and grilled potatoes

This recipe is from the Mustards Napa Valley Grill cookbook. Given that it's been too cold out to grill, I used a grill pan for the tuna and roasted the potatoes in the oven.

The tuna is topped with a salad of roasted red bell peppers, poblano chiles, red onion, cumin, lemon juice and olive oil. The grilled potatoes recipe calls for making a foil packet of potatoes with olive oil, salt, pepper and herbs. I chose to use sage:

Instead of grilling the foil packet, I put it in the oven at 375 degrees for about 35 minutes. I had never cooked potatoes this way before - the sage really infused the potatoes with flavor.

Here's the plated dish:

Root vegetable soup

This soup was inspired by a recipe for white vegetable soup in the Mustards Grill Napa Valley cookbook. My version primarily uses root vegetables, and the result is a creamy soup with a unique flavor. This recipe freezes really well - if you're planning to freeze it, omit the milk/cream and add it to the reheated soup just before serving. You could garnish this soup with bacon, fresh herbs, pesto or croutons.

Root vegetable soup
Serves 4

3 small leeks or 1-2 large leeks, white parts only (use the dark tops to make vegetable stock)
1 small white onion
1 medium parsnip
2 medium turnips
1 one pound celery root
4 cups vegetable or chicken stock
2 teaspoons olive oil
2 tablespoons of milk or cream
salt and pepper

Slice leeks thinly. Peel all of the other vegetables and cut into 1/2 inch chunks. Saute the leeks and onions in the olive oil until softened and onions are translucent. Add the rest of the vegetables and a pinch of salt and pepper - saute for about 5 minutes. Add the stock, bring to a boil. Lower the heat to a simmer and cook until the vegetables are tender, about 20 minutes. Puree the soup in a blender in two batches. Add more salt and pepper to taste, stir in milk or cream.