It turns out that my food pyramid is defective:

• Level 1: Sugars: white, light brown, dark brown and confectioners
• Level 2: Butter, eggs and milk
• Level 3: Flour and baking powder
• Level 4: Bacon and chicken wings

It appears that I left out vegetables. And it further turns out that there are some rarely eaten vegetables that can be delicious. Even cauliflower. How many times have you eaten cauliflower? Unless you eat a lot of cheap stir fry, I bet you can count the number of times on your fingers.

But this dish is a reason you’ll need to start counting on your toes, too. This is an excellent side companion, one that will create conversation at the dinner table.

This recipe can be quickly made and gives you the freedom to experiment. Try more lemon or chile or mint, bump up the onion, maybe add some Asian hot sauce. This can be your cauliflower gateway. The recipe is from Chef Bruce Binn of Termidor in San Francisco. It’s further proof that San Francisco is an American culinary mother lode.

In the directions below, the cauliflower is baked, cooled, then warmed in a skillet. We were testing, we were hungry, we skipped the cooking and warming part. We went directly from oven to seasoning and found the disk yummy.

Not to worry, my readers. I will be returning to chocolate and alcohol in the next blogs.

Crispy Cauliflower with Lemon and Mint

Yield: Serves 4 as a side dish

Ingredients:

• 1 medium head of cauliflower, rinsed, trimmed and cut into small florets (about 1 pound)
• 4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided
• Salt
• 1 ½ tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 4 mint leaves, torn

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

In a large mixing bowl, toss the cauliflower floret with 2 tablespoon of the olive oil and a pinch of salt. Transfer the cauliflower to a rimmed baking sheet and roast, rotating the baking sheet and stirring the cauliflower halfway through, until the edges are golden brown, about 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool completely.

In a medium skillet, heat the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil.  Add the cauliflower and cook over medium-high heat, stirring until crispy and warmed through, about 4 minutes.

In a large blow, toss the cauliflower with the lemon juice, pepper flakes and mint. Season with salt and serve immediate.

Source: Chef Bruce Binn, Termidor, San Francisco and published in Tasting Table

This delightful dish is actually easy. Suzen offers this main course at Cooking by the Book where twenty or thirty or forty people come to cook together. That group is divided into teams with each team assigned one recipe at their workstation. At the end of the evening, the lamb team always gets a standing ovation. Make this dish, and you, too, will be applauded.

This recipe is from the brilliant chef and author Douglas Rodriguez. By all means, look at his cookbooks for recipes that are tested, distinctive, and incredibly satisfying.

Grilled Rack of Lamb with Mango-Mint Mojo

Yield: Plan on 2-3 ribs per person

Ingredients for Dry Adobo Rub (2 cups) and One Rack of Lamb:

• 5 tablespoons fennel seeds
• 5 tablespoons mustard seeds
• 5 tablespoons toasted cumin seeds
• 6 dried ancho chiles, seeded and chopped or powder
• 6 dried guajillo chiles, seeded and chopped
• 2 tablespoons crushed red pepper flakes
• 6 tablespoons salt
• 1 rack of lamb (7 to 8 ribs)

Ingredients for Mango-Mint Mojo (2 Cups):

• 2 ripe mangoes, peeled, pitted and chopped
• ½ cup freshly squeezed lime juice
• ½ cup chopped fresh mint leaves

Preparation:

For Adobo Rub: Heat a large skillet over high heat. Place ingredients in the skillet and toast until they become fragrant and charred and the seeds begin to crackle, 5 to 7 minutes. Remove the skillet from the hat and let cool. Working in batches, if necessary, transfer the toasted ingredients to a spice mill or coffee grinder and grind until smooth. Store in an airtight container until needed.

Preheat oven to 425°F.

For the Lamb: Using a sharp knife, remove the fat from the rack of lamb so the bones are clean but still attached to the loin. Thoroughly coat the lamb with the adobo rub. Transfer the lamb to a platter and let sit in the refrigerator up to an hour.

In a cast iron skillet or grill pan, sear racks on the meaty side for about 2 minutes. Transfer to a sheet or roasting pan, place in oven and roast for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the interior of the meat reaches 125°F for rare or 135°F for medium-rare. Alternatively, the racks may be cut into chop and seared or grilled.

Source: Nuevo Latino by Douglas Rodriguez

That’s Sardinia, after Sicily, the second largest island in the Mediterranean. Perched west of the mainland, Sardinia is famous for its distinct cuisine and wonderful wines. Look for Sardinian reds and you’ll find terrific sun-filled taste at really impressive prices.

While Suzen and I have yet to travel there, we know the wines and now, thanks to Lidia Bastianich, we’re sampling the food. In her book, Lidia Cooks from the Heart of Italy, the Sardinian chapter is a gem. This recipe, Spaghetti with Cold Tomato-Mint Sauce, will challenge your imagination. Imagine a sauce of tomato, mint, basic, pine nuts, anchovy, pepper flakes, and capers. What is it going to taste like? With most dishes, you have some idea of what the dominant flavor will be. Not with this recipe. There is a perfect balance of flavors here, so nothing dominates, everything contributes. True, you’ll think you have a taste of mint for a second, but that will fade and anchovy will glide over your tongue, until some pepper arrives.

This is a fabulous dish. Sardinia is remote, not wealthy, not highly developed. But the culture there makes every possible use of the native ingredients, from the land and from the sea. If you try this dish for yourself, you’ll soon be planning an entire dinner party around it.

Ah, and if dinner is your goal, all you need to add is a nice arugula salad with a balsamic vinaigrette and bottle of, naturally, Sardinian red.

Spaghetti with Cold Tomato-Mint Sauce

Yield: serves 6

Ingredients:

For the sauce:

12 ounces ripe cherry tomatoes, about 2 ½cups
½ cup loosely packed fresh basil leaves
¼ cup loosely packed fresh mint leaves
¼ cup pine nuts, lightly toasted
2 small anchovy filets, finely chopped (2 teaspoons)
1 plump garlic clove crushed and peeled
½ teaspoon kosher salt
⅛ teaspoon peperoncino flakes, or to taste
⅓ cup extra virgin olive oil
¼ cup small capers drained

For the pasta:

1 pound spaghetti
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1 cup freshly grated pecorino (or half pecorino and half Grana Padano or Parmiagiano-Reggiano, for a milder flavor), plus more for passing

Preparation:

Fill a big pot of salted water (at least 6 quarts with a tablespoon of kosher salt), and heat to a rolling boil

To make the sauce, rinse the cherry tomatoes, basil, and mint leaves, and pat dry. Put them all in a food processor bowl along with the pine nuts, anchovies, garlic, salt, and peperoncino. Process until puréed, scraping down the bowl as needed. With the machine running, pour in the olive oil in a slow, steady stream, forming a thick, emulsified sauce. If serving now, scrape the sauce into a warm deep serving bowl, and stir in the whole capers.

When the pasta water is boiling, drop in the spaghetti, stirring and separating strands. Cover the pot, return the water to a boil over high heat, and then set the cover ajar, and cook the pasta until al dente. While the pasta cooks, ladle some of the boiling water into the serving bowl to warm. Scrape in the sauce, and stir in the capers.

Lift the spaghetti from the pot, let drain for a moment, drop it into the bowl, and toss well until all the strands are coated with sauce. Sprinkle over the parsley and grated cheese, and toss again. Serve immediately, passing more grated cheese at the table

Source: Lidia Cooks from the Heart of Italy by Lidia Bastianich

I’ve never bought any other Girl Scout cookie except the Thin Mints. And although I do buy several boxes, they don’t last through the year. I just learned you can freeze them, but even that wouldn’t work for me.

I’ve wanted to make the cookie myself — not that I won’t support the Girl Scouts still — but a week after my four boxes are gone, what am I to do? It’s a long, long way to next spring.

I have googled and searched and baked and I’m still looking for the right recipe. There are many attempts out there to duplicate the Thin Mint, but I haven’t found one that is truly satisfying yet. There are lots of silly ones, like the idea of coating a Ritz cracker with chocolate mint. That’s not going to work and you don’t even have to test it to know that.

Along the way, some of the candidate recipes have been good and I’m presenting one below. It’s a good chocolate mint wafer. I can’t get the right coating for it yet, but if I do, or if I find a true substitute for the original thin mints, I’ll let you know.

And if you know of a true Thin Mint recipe, please share it. In the meantime, this Thin Mint Wafer is good on its own or would be ideal as a sandwich cookie. If you are making a sandwich cookie, cut the frozen dough a full ¼ inch thick or more, and bake only 13 minutes so the cookies remain soft, not crisp. Then take two of these wafers, and cement them with some mint buttercream. Chill the sandwiches slightly before eating to intensify the mint flavor.

Thin Mint Wafers

Yield: about 40 cookies

Ingredients:

2 ¼ cups all purpose flour
¼ cup cornstarch
6 Tablespoons cocoa powder
½ Teaspoon salt
1 cup white sugar
½ cup of butter, room temperature
⅓ cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon peppermint extract

Preparation:

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, cornstarch, cocoa powder and salt.

In a large bowl of an electric mixer, cream together the butter and sugar. It’s best to first cream the butter, then add the sugar one tablespoon at a time. With the mixer on low speed, add in the milk and the extracts. The mixture will look curdled. Gradually, add in the flour mixture until fully incorporated.

On wax paper bases, shape the dough into two logs, about 1 ½ inches in diameter. Warp tightly in plastic wrap or foil and freeze for at least 1-2 hours, or until the dough is very firm

Preheat the oven to 375° F.

Slice the dough rounds not more that ¼ inch thick. If they are too thick they will not be crispy. Place on a parchment lined baking sheet. The cookies will not spread very much, so you can put them quite close together.

Bake for 13-15 minutes ,until the cookies are firm at the edges. Cool the cookies completely on a rack before dipping in chocolate or using frosting to make sandwich cookies.

Source: Adapted from bakingbites.com

I really think I have perfected the mojito: the secret is freshness and sweetness. The standard mojito calls for lime juice but I prefer the sweetness of lemon juice. And for the mint, well, you can’t top the intense scent of fresh mint that five minutes ago was in the ground and now is being muddled. The aroma from a dozen leaves can fill the kitchen.

I’ve experimented making this drink with mint-flavored sugar syrup, but I think it’s better with standard sugar syrup and allowing the mint flavor to come from freshly selected leaves.

Most mojito recipes call for topping the drink off with club soda, and I’ve put that option here. With the club soda, the drink is sobered a tad. And I suppose classier to some palettes. But after a long week spent drinking only Pepsi, I look forward to Friday night and a stiff cocktail strong enough to move barbells. So, I leave the club soda out.

Go hunting in your yard for some mint, grab some rum, and enjoy.

Brian’s Lemon Mojito

Yield: 2 large drinks

Ingredients:

12-15 mint leaves, freshly picked, rinsed clean and patted dry
1 tablespoon sugar
4 ounces plain sugar syrup
3 ounces fresh lemon juice, reserving one of the juiced lemon halves
6 ounces white rum
10 ice cubes
⅓ cup super fine sugar
1 cup shaved ice
2 ounces club soda [optional]

Preparation:

Place the mint leaves in a steel cocktail shaker, add the tablespoon of sugar, and muddle for 2 minutes.

Add the sugar syrup, lemon juice, and rum into the cocktail shaker along with enough ice cubes to fill the shaker. Shake until thoroughly chilled [that’s about 20 vigorous shakes]. Set the cocktail shaker aside.

On a plate, spread the super fine sugar into a circle on a dish; the circle should have the same diameter as your cocktail glasses. Take one of the juice lemon halves and run it around the rim of two cocktail glasses. Immediately dip the rims into the super fine sugar. Do not be delicate here; get a solid coating of sugar on both sides of the rim.

Add the shaved ice to each cocktail glass. Pour in the mojito from the cocktail shaker. Top, if you wish, with club soda. Drink fervently.

Source: Brian O’Rourke