Mary Brown Malouf is the late Executive Editor of Salt Lake magazine and Utah's expert on local food and dining. She still does not, however, know how to make a decent cup of coffee.
Bright? Check. Fresh? Of course. Green? Delightfully so. If anything tastes like the springtime, it’s spring peas. And while fresh-picked are only just available now, peas are one of the few vegetables that retain much of their flavor and form when frozen, so there is no reason not to indulge this season and beyond. We’re obsessed with the classic pairing of peas and mint in this bright, verdant soup, but there are countless other ways to capture the joyous flavor of peas in your cooking. Here are a few spring pea recipes to get you started.
Fresh Pea Soup with Mint
Cook 1 chopped onion and 2 chopped leeks in 2 Tbsp. butter until they are soft. Add 4 cups of chicken or vegetable stock and 5 cups of peas. Cook until peas are tender, then stir in about 1/2 cup of chopped fresh mint leaves, 2 tsp. of salt and 1 tsp. of white pepper. Puree in a blender, one cup at a time. Serve warm or cold. Top with a dollop of crème fraîche.
Three-way Peas
Saute 4 minced garlic cloves and 1/2 tsp. grated ginger in 1 Tbsp. of olive oil. Stir in 3 cups snow peas and 3 cups of sugar snap peas and sauté until barely tender. Stir in 4 cups of pea shoots, cook for 2-3 minutes, then serve.
Risi e Bisi
Cook one minced clove of garlic in 2 Tbsp. olive oil, then stir in a heaping cup of Arborio rice and sauté a minute. Add a quart of warmed stock or water, a ladleful at a time, cooking until absorbed after each ladleful. Stir in a cup of peas, 1/4 cup diced, frizzled pancetta and 1/2 cup corn. Finish with 1/4 cup or so of grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese.
Mushy Peas
Bring a shallow pot of salted water to a boil over medium-high heat. Add frozen peas and cook for 3 minutes, or until tender. Drain peas and transfer to a food processor. Add a few Tbsp. of butter, salt and pepper to taste, and process until thick but with small pieces of peas remaining. If it seems too thick, mix in 1 Tbsp. of heavy cream. Stir in 2 tsp. of lemon juice. It’s a great side dish for ham.
On Ice
Don’t turn a cold shoulder to frozen peas. They’re picked fresh and flash-frozen when ripe, and they can live in your freezer for months. The trick: Don’t overcook them. Because they’ve been flash-steamed before frozen, they’re ready to eat. Cook for a brief minute or simply defrost them before throwing them directly into your hot dish (so they don’t cool down your recipe). Then simply savor their sweet flavor and firm, delicious forms.
Light and airy on the inside and golden and crispy on the outside—it’s the perfect waffle. Add unique toppings and you’ll have a new go-to for delicious, around-the-clock dishes, savory…
Remember when a can of Swanson’s beef broth was all we had? We’re way beyond that now.
A couple of years ago, the news was full of the alleged near-miraculous health benefits of “bone broth.” And suddenly those cans of basic broth got shoved aside to make room for the new (old, really) kid on the block.
I read article after article and recipe after recipe for “bone broth,” but I couldn’t really see the difference between it and the beef/veal stock Julia Child taught me how to make in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, except you cook stock about 5 hours and you cook bone broth up to twice that long. The longer cooking time extracts more collagen that converts to gelatin, which makes wrinkles and aches caused by aging to disappear. Not really.
But having long-simmered beef stock/bone broth on hand is the foundation of making delicious food quickly. It adds depth of flavor, protein, umami and, yes, collagen if you want it, to all kinds of dishes.
Basic Beef Stock Recipe
3-4 pounds of meaty beef bones (veal bones, if you want a more delicate veal stock)
3 carrots, washed and broken in pieces
2 medium onions, peeled and cut in chunks
3 stalks celery with leaves, washed & broken in pieces
2 leeks, cleaned and cut into chunks
1 sprig thyme
2 bay leaves
2 cloves garlic
8 peppercorns
Place the bones on a baking sheet, sprinkle them with 1 tsp. sugar and brown them in a 450-degree oven, turning them several times, until they are really brown. Put the bones and scrapings from baking sheet (deglazed with water) in a stockpot, and cover with cold water. Bring to a simmer—not a boil—and skim the scum for about 5-10 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients to the pot and put in cold water to cover by about 2 inches. Bring to a simmer, not a boil, and skim as needed. Partially cover the pot, turn heat to low and simmer for 4-5 hours. If water gets too low, add more to the pot. Turn off the heat and let the stock come to room temperature. Strain the broth, discard the solids and put the stock in the refrigerator until the fat solidifies and rises to the top. Skim and discard the fat.
Note that the recipe does not call for salt. Stock is one ingredient; salt is another. You’ll add seasoning in the final soup, sauce, stew or whatever you’re preparing with the stock.
LIQUID ASSET
Step One: Befriend your butcher.
Step Two: Simmer bones and veggies in a stockpot.
Step Three: Use the flavorful broth as a base for some of your most mouthwatering wintertime dishes. It’s just that simple.
• Cook pasta, rice or other grains in stock instead of water.
• Use stock as the braising liquid when making stew or pot roast.
• Cook potatoes in stock instead of water before mashing.
“THE BEST KIND OF BEEF BONES FOR STOCK ARE THE KNUCKLES—BEEF KNUCKLE BONES—WHICH ARE REALLY LIKE THE JOINTS. THEY JUST HAVE A LOT OF MARROW IN THEM AND ARE BEST USED AFTER ROASTING TO REALLY DRAW OUT THEIR FLAVOR.”
2 lbs. potatoes 1 tsp. salt 1 cup milk or half-and-half 6 Tbsp. butter 1 egg salt and pepper
Peel and quarter potatoes. Put them in a large pot with enough cold water to cover them. Add salt and bring water to a boil. Lower heat to medium and simmer potatoes until they are tender when pierced with a fork (15-20 minutes). Drain the potatoes, add the butter and mash with a ricer or electric mixer. Add the egg and beat it into the potatoes with a wooden spoon. Add milk or cream and continue to mash until fluffy.
Roasted Tomato Potatoes
Fold 3 oven-roasted tomatoes, coarsely chopped, into hot mashed potatoes.
Blue Potatoes
Fold ½ cup crumbled blue cheese into hot potatoes. Top each serving with bacon bits.
Pakora Potatoes
Fold 1 tsp. Turmeric, ½ tsp. curry and 1 cup of frozen peas into hot mashed potatoes.
Pesto Potatoes
Fold ½ cup basil pesto into hot mashed potatoes. Garnish with toasted pine nuts.
This article was originally published in the July/August 2018 issue of Salt Lake magazine.We are sharing it again today to celebrate National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day.
The room was strangely quiet when I entered. I had expected chatter and smiles from our group of chocolate chip cookie judges—this is supposed to be a fun gig, right? Then I figured out the silence: All five mouths were full. Few have taken chocolate chip cookies as seriously as this group.The expert panel had been invited to taste eight cookies, narrowed down from hundreds of nominations, and determine the best one. Chocolate chip cookies have come a long way since Mrs. Wakefield’s Tollhouse Inn—they sank into commercial dreck like Chips Ahoy, were revived by Mrs. Fields, then sugar became a criminal. Now they’re back—the latest trend is cookies delivered hot right to your door. Even fortified with milk, our judges experienced palate fatigue—Stuart immediately headed for Beltex Meats for a protein fix and Pat was aiming for a salad.
The eight nominees for Salt Lake’s chocolate chip cookie contest; Photo by Adam Finkle
Chocolate chip cookies, especially fresh-baked ones, are a definite trend. Of course, they’re more a mainstay than a trend in sweet-toothed Utah—Debbie Fields’ ubiquitous cookies were headquartered in Park City until she sold the company. We asked Salt Lake magazine readers (that’s you) to send in their favorite bakeries and spots for great cookies and assembled a team of judges to sample the top suggested cookies. The question is: In an era when culinary innovation rules, do you need to improve on the chocolate chip cookie? Our judges thought not, although they enjoyed all their cookies. Still, everyone has their platonic ideal of the perfect chocolate chip cookie, and that ideal is tied up with childhood, Mother and the American way. Okay, that’s a little overboard, but most of our judges (not Stuart, the Brit) definitely compared these cookies to the ones they ate when they were kids. The truth is, sometimes memory is the sweetest.
The judges had scoresheets with suggestions for qualities to be considered when tasting each cookie—appearance, texture, cookie flavor and chocolate flavor. But in the end, the assessment of cookie excellence is subjective. Theoretically, each cookie quality rated a numerical score, but the only score that really counted was the overall score—one through 10 for each quality. So, the highest possible score was 50. The lowest score was 19. The highest score—44.5—was awarded to our contest winner.
Meet the Judges
Pat Holmes is the former V.P. of Partnership Development at Visit Salt Lake. She has been selling Salt Lake as a destination for over 30 years, and is always looking for and touting “the best…” in Salt Lake. Now she can add the best chocolate chip cookies to this list of superlatives.
Lydia Martinez comes from a melting pot of culinary backgrounds—she has family food ties to Russia, Mexico, Japan and the Philippines. Her marketing company, Elle Marketing, represents many restaurants.
Stuart Melling has been writing about the Utah dining scene for more than a decade. More importantly, he has zero nostalgia when it comes to cookies. “Hailing from the UK, my childhood was filled with Eccles cakes, Bourbon biscuits and Jammie Dodgers—Google them. In judging the perfect chocolate chip cookie I’m purely tasting what’s on the plate here and now, not some misty-eyed memory.”
Valerie Phillips has covered Utah food for 25+ years as an award-winning writer/editor. Now she owns Chewandchat.com. She’s freelanced for The New York Times and magazines such as Utah Life, Wasatch View and Food Network. She’s the author of “Soup’s On!” and “Dining Through the Decades.”
Derek Deitsch is Salt Lake magazine’s former dessert reporter. He is working to master his own chocolate chip cookie recipe, making him a perfect cookie critic.
History: All About the Best Chocolate Chip
The chocolate chip hadn’t even been invented when, in 1938, Ruth Graves Wakefield chopped up a Nestle semi-sweet chocolate bar to put in her cookie dough. At first, the company included little hammers to break the bars into chips. In 1941, they finally came up with the morsel—a chip of chocolate that holds its shape when baked. According to Art Pollard, owner of Utah’s much-awarded Amano chocolate, this is because “Chocolate chips contain less cocoa butter than, say, a high-quality chocolate bar.” If you want to up your cookie’s chocolate intensity (and get rid of some aggression) buy an Amano bar, or other high-quality chocolate—there are lots made in Utah— and break it into bits for your cookies.
Cookies & Beverage Pairings
MILK: A cold glass of milk is the classic accompaniment to American cookies. The judges had some disagreement about whether skim, 2% or whole milk is best, but milk, with its heft and hint of protein, is what helped the judges through the contest.
BEER: The flavor combination of beer and chocolate is much discussed and the bitterness of brew does complement the slight bitterness of semisweet chocolate. A sip of beer is also a total palate reliever when you’re eating cookies professionally.
TEA: Although our British judge Stuart Melling kept on about English biscuits and tea, chocolate chip cookies are too rich to pair with a cuppa. The aromas clash. At the competition, Melling preferred water.
COFFEE: Cookies and milk are for evening snacking, but coffee and cookies are an energy boost midday. Or midnight.
And the Nominees Are...
Reader nominee: Ruby Snap Our most-nominated cookie came from Ruby Snap, which actually makes lots of kinds of chocolate chip cookies—Ricki, with coconut dough, Maris, with a caramel center. The cookie in contention was Trudy, and what the judges noticed first was the smell of cinnamon. Judge Valerie Phillips compared it to a Snickerdoodle with chips.
Reader nominee: Rose EstablishmentThe only crispy cookie we tasted—most bakers opted for a softer, chewier style. The judges agreed that these cookies were less uniform—they liked the more homemade look. And the obviously high quality dark chocolate layer that ran through the middle. “I can’t help but keep coming back to this cookie,” said Lydia. “Looks like a flapjack,” said Stuart.
Reader nominee: BudsOur judges were perplexed by the cookie from Buds. It crumbled very easily and Val detected green flecks as well as chips throughout, which the judges determined to be zucchini. “It’s compensating for something,” said Stuart. “There must be something missing or they wouldn’t put a vegetable in it.” Turns out it was vegan. Most agreed the cookie tasted good, it just didn’t quite measure up to the other cookies.
Reader nominee: The Koekie Co.At first glance, these cookies were almost too perfect. Each one was perfectly circular and exactly the same size. That isn’t easy to do with a drop cookie. The chewier texture made clear there was oatmeal inside—a common addition, but not strictly canonical. Not everyone likes oatmeal in their chocolate chip cookie, but “it just sort of works in this one,” said Derek. The smallest of the bunch, it was the only cookie any of the judges actually finished.
Reader nominee: CHIPChip was adamant about delivering the cookies fresh so the judges could taste them warm and gooey. To true Utah taste, the cookie is very sweet. Pat liked the sweetness of the milk chocolate chips, but other judges disagreed. “I can eat a lot of cookie, but this might be too much even for me,” said Derek. Overall, the judges agreed this was the most traditional in appearance, and certainly the largest.
Reader nominee: Goodly CookiesThe aroma arrived first, as it should. “This one smells like a homemade chocolate chip cookie,” said Pat. Can there be too much of a good thing? Our judges thought so. “This cookie is intimidating,” said Val. Stuart’s only comment was to drop the cookie on the plate where it landed with a loud clunk. Problem: “It’s so thick it’s undercooked, and doughy,” said Val. Some judges did not have a problem eating cookie dough, of course. “But we’re judging cookies, not cookie dough,” said Lydia.
And the Winner Is…
Süss Cookie Co. The name: “Süss” means sweet or cute in Swiss German. We generally think of cute implying small. “In England, biscuits [cookies] are small and you dip them in tea,” said Stuart Melling. This cookie was certainly not small. Judges liked that it had lots of vanilla and semisweet chips. This was dubbed the “Goldilocks cookie”—not too big, not too sweet, not overpowering. In fact, just right. Well, Val did wish for a few more chips.
https://vimeo.com/285550993
Eat the Cookies
Ruby Snap, 770 S. 300 West, SLC, 801-834-6111, rubysnap.com
Rose Establishment, 235 S. 400 West, SLC, 801-208-5569, theroseestb.com
Süss Cookie Co., 275 S. Center St., Midway, 801-508-4548, susscookieco.com
CHIP, 155 E. 900 South #101, SLC, 801-889-2412, chipcookies.co
It’s the summer’s coolest dessert. Or snack. Or intermezzo. Or anything, really. And you can make granita in just three easy steps. Cool and crunchy, the easy-to-make granita is a semi-frozen summer treat. We’re going with watermelon, but when it comes to choosing a granita flavor, the sky is the limit. Whatever flavor you favor, it’s all about the right recipe and, of course, the freezer and fork.
Watermelon Granita
All You Need
4 cups seedless watermelon chunks ½ cup sugar Juice of one lemon Tequila
Easy as 1, 2, 3
1. Pulse watermelon, sugar and lemon in a food processor until smooth.
2. Pour mixture into a shallow pan and let freeze.
3. Rake a fork through the frozen mixture to break it up into snow-like consistency. Repeat this twice more, freezing and raking, then rake it one final time, spoon it into cups and garnish. Splash the finished ice with as much tequila as desired.
Herbs and spices are the palette of the kitchen—knowing how to mix, match and balance them is the mark of a true chef, one who can imagine flavor. For a long time, the American spice shelf was pretty standard, but in the last few years our pantry has gotten larger. Now chefs incorporate flavors from Indonesia, Africa and the Middle East as well as the ones we know from Europe, Central America, China and Japan.
The latest exotic appearing on menus is the spice blend called ras el hanout. The words mean “top shelf” and it’s commonly used in North African cooking. Like Indian curry or garam masala, every home cook has their own version, but most include cardamom, cumin, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, allspice, dry ginger, chili peppers, coriander seed, peppercorn, sweet and hot paprika, fenugreek and dry turmeric.
“I am Israeli,” says Vessel Kitchen chef and partner, Roe’e Levy, “so ras el hanout is not exotic to me. I’m a spice freak and I use lots of spices from the Middle East but also from all over—Korean chili, sumac, kaffir lime, a spice blend called hawaji. We blend the spices ourselves. Ras el hanout is traditionally Moroccan and we use it for roasted chicken—the fragrance complements the chicken—but we use the chicken in other dishes, braised chicken and bone broth, for example, so the spice flavor carries through.”
Ras el hanout would be equally good on lamb, pork or even whole fish. Use it to give an exotic edge to tomato or vegetable soup (add chickpeas to your basic recipe) or to a lamb stew. It also adds excitement to vegetables—cauliflower, for example—or a mixed vegetable saute.
Briar Handly of Handle in Park City and HSL in Salt Lake might have started the fried chicken invasion of Utah—when HSL first opened, it was the fried chicken everyone was talking about. (Of course, back in prehistory, the first Kentucky Fried Chicken was in SLC, so we have a long history of fried.)
But now it seems you can’t run a restaurant without fried chicken. Bars as different as Garage on Beck and Proper Brewing serve chicken and waffles, fried chicken is on most brunch and breakfast menus now—Pig & a Jelly Jar makes great fried chicken. So does Sweet Lake Biscuits & Limeade. And Rye. Pretty Bird brought us the first hot fried chicken sandwich, Nashville-style; Justin Soelberg’s Nomad Eatery also makes a tasty hot fried chicken sandwich.
(One wonders whatever happened to other chicken preparations. Chicken and dumplings. Chicken pie. Has roasted chicken been entirely relegated to grocery store rotisseries? Has Costco’s $4 chicken so dominated the poultry pecking order that no other roast chicken dare show its face?)
But as a Southerner, to me, a world with too much fried chicken is just enough fried chicken. Curry fried chicken, hot fried chicken, organic fried chicken—I tend to like it all.
Offer your guests a bite of abundance, peace, wisdom and purity. In other words, an olive. Olives are an ancient species—the tree had its origins some 20 to 40 million years ago—and have been eaten by humans for say, 6,000 years, give or take. It’s not surprising so much symbolism has become attached to them.
Part of almost every cocktail party menu, they can also provide a conversation starter. At such occasions, just Google “olive.” “Hey, did you know that olives were the source of the Minoans’ wealth?” you might ask casually. Or, “By the way, an olive tree in Croatia is 1,600 years old and still bears edible olives!” Okay, maybe it’s just best to chat about the weather. Know enough to put together an interesting selection. Most grocery stores feature an olive bar now, and naturally SLC’s gourmet store stars—Caputo’s Market & Deli and Liberty Heights Fresh—have great selections and knowledgeable sales people.
Kalamata
Everybody’s favorite Greek olives, used in salads, cheeses and all kinds of cooked dishes. Usually preserved in red wine vinegar and olive oil, they have a beautiful purple skin.
Arbequina
Little, rosy-brown olives, often found with stems attached, are highly aromatic. Mostly grown in Catalonia, Spain, also found in Aragon and Andalusia, as well as California, Argentina and Chile.
Lucques
Lucques is a cultivar of olives grown primarily in Languedoc in France. It is primarily used as a green table olive with a bright, tart flavor.
Alfonso
Alfonso olives are considered Chilean, though they’re influenced by Peruvian culture. Huge, purple and brine-cured, then macerated in red wine.
Tournante
Dark olives simply cured for several months in sea salt brine for a purely fruity olive flavor.
Royal Herculean
Great big olives from Arcadia are unpasteurized so they retain more tannins than many other olives.
This article was included in the current issue of Salt Lake magazine.Read more food stories here.
People like to play with their food. So the classic ’rita has been subject to experiment, especially to celebrate Cinco De Mayo. Although purists wouldn’t call these margaritas, the basic drink invites both skilled and misguided bartenders to mess with the basics. Sometimes to good effect, sometimes to disaster. You decide. Celebrate Cinco De Mayo with 24 variations on the classic margarita.
The Good
Muddled grilled pineapple and jalapeño with cilantro
Rim glass with Tajin—hot pepper powder
Substitute half of the lime juice with pink grapefruit juice
Sub in blue Curacao for the triple sec
Mix crushed and strained watermelon with the usual ingredients
Substitute mezcal for the tequila and add a drip or two of agave syrup. Rim the glass in a mixture of salt and smoked paprika.
Add 2 ounces blood orange juice to basic recipe.
Muddle jalapeno slices in the bottom of the shaker, add rest of ingredients and strain.
Mix crushed and strained watermelon with the usual ingredients
The Bad
Swap out the lime juice for Godiva liqueur, use Hershey’s syrup and a crushed Oreo cookie rim on the glass.
A beer version: Use frozen limeade, 12 oz tequila, 12 oz water, 1 can of beer.
White wine margarita—really??—uses orange juice concentrate, fresh lemon and lime juices, sugar, triple sec and white wine.
Replace Cointreau with mango liqueur and a dash of hot sauce.
Ugly
“The Guinness” calls for 1 cup lemon gelato, 1 can Nitro IPA Guinness, with a salted rim; garnish with lemon slice
Add an ounce of kale juice and some orange juice to sweeten.
Add 2 oz. green tea liqueur and a teaspoon of Rose’s lime juice.
Hard and Fast Rules
1.Never use sweet and sour mix.
2.Always use decent tequila—good tequila means you don’t need agave or simple syrup.
3.Always use fresh-squeezed lime juice.
Local Favorites
For when you can’t stand to be your own bartender for one more night.
Lake Effect’s “El Salvador” mixes dry vermouth, cointreau, cucumber, lime and honey with blanco tequila.
Chimayo in Park City’s pomegranate version is a fave: Use pomegranate juice and garnish with seeds.
El Chihuahua’s famous “Death Star” ups the impact with a dose of Everclear added to the mix.
Mandarin in Bountiful makes a “Gingerita” to complement their Chinese food.
White Horse’s “Spicy Margarita” adds Creme de Cacao, lime, dry Curacao and habanero bitters.
At Water Witch, the bartenders can make a classic margarita or you can trust them to make their own idiosyncratic mix.
This article was originally published in our May 2019 issue and was updated in May 2021. See all of our food and drink coverage here.
The Good
