What’s Cooking?

 

 

We have been running our own little test kitchen at The Blind Monk and have finally settled on a couple of new small plates for the menu. The first is a smoked salmon crostini. French baguette is toasted in the oven with some olive oil, salt, and pepper, then topped with a

fromage blanc mixed with fresh chopped herbs, freshly grated horseradish, a pinch of salt, and a squeeze of lemon. Atop that, we place some chopped cucumber and then the smoked salmon.

 

 

 

 

The next dish is a roasted cauliflower with a Manchego cream sauce. Manchego is not an easy cheese to melt, so it took a little trial and error before getting a good procedure down. First, we melt about a  1/2 teaspoon of butter before adding 2 oz of heavy cream. We bring the butter and cream mixture to a boil over medium heat and reduce it for about 30 seconds. We then take it off the heat before adding the Manchego that we had previously grated in a coffee grinder. To this, we add a dash of salt and a squeeze of lemon before straining it through a chinois. The sauce is made to order for each plate and garnished with some toasted almond and sliced Castelvetrano olives.