Party Food for New Year's Eve and beyond, from Valerie Aikman-Smith's "Salt"

We all use salt in our cooking, but how often have you thought creatively about salt? Salt is more than just, well, salty. In the cookbook Salt: Cooking with the World's Favorite Seasoning, Valerie Aikman-Smith presents salt beyond the shaker, using unusual salts (like the sel gris and truffle salt called for below) in recipes that extend to cocktails and desserts as well as entrees and appetizers.

Valerie Aikman-Smith is a food stylist and writer based in Los Angeles. She trained in her native Scotland and started her cooking career working at Greens in San Francisco and the legendary Chez Panisse in Berkeley. Valerie then turned to food styling for film, television, commericials, and print. Valerie's talents mean that the photographs (by Jonathan Gregson) in this cookbook are as gorgeous as the recipes are delicious.

For the Fissler Foodies' New Year's Eve party we are planning to serve Valerie's Corsican Fried Olives and Gold Potato Crisps with Truffle Salt. For both of these recipes we will use the Fissler Pressure Pan Set, which comes with a deep fry basket, making it very easy to lift the crisps and olives out of the hot oil.

Corsican Fried Olives

Recipe courtesy of Valerie Aikman-Smith

This is a recipe that you end up sharing with all your friends because they are so divine. One bite: that’s all it takes. It’s fun to use both black and green olives.

40 pitted medium to large green and black olives

4 oz/115g goats cheese at room temperature

1 teaspoons herbes de Provence

Zest of 1 orange

1 egg

1 tablespoon of flour

1 cup/2oz/56g of panko or coarse breadcrumbs

2 cups/16fl oz/500ml of vegetable oil.

Sel de Gris to sprinkle

You will need a pastry bag with a small nozzle.

Deep frying thermometer

In a bowl mix together the goats cheese, herbs and orange zest until smooth.  Put the cheese mixture in the pastry bag and set aside.

Lightly beat the egg in a small bowl and set aside.  Put the flour on a small plate and the breadcrumbs on another.

Take the pastry bag and pipe each olive until full with the cheese mixture.

Dip each olive in the flour, then the egg and toss in the breadcrumbs until well coated.

Heat the oil in a heavy bottomed pan until the oil reaches 350F/180C on a deep frying thermometer. If you don’t have a deep frying thermometer test the oil by dropping a breadcrumb in, it should turn golden brown in about 20 seconds.

Fry the olives in batches until crispy and golden brown about a minute.  Drain on paper towels. Sprinkle generously with the sel de gris and serve.

*Panko are coarse Japanese breadcrumbs but if you can’t find them use regular.

Gold potato crisps with truffle salt

Recipe by courtesy of Valerie Aikman-Smith

Potatoes, truffles and salt are a match made in heaven.  The real trick to this recipe is to slice the potatoes wafer thin: a mandolin is a good tool for this.  Use a gold potato like Yukon Gold or Yellow Finn.

6 small/1lb/500g Yukon Gold potatoes

Vegetable oil to fry

Truffle salt

Mandolin

Deep Fat fryer

Wash and dry the potatoes.

Thinly slice the potatoes and put to one side.

Heat the oil in the fryer until it reaches 350F/180C.

Fry the potato slices in batches.  Drain the potatoes on paper towels.

Place the drained potato crisps in a bowl and sprinkle with the truffle salt, toss and serve.

To test if the oil is hot enough, drop a breadcrumb into the oil and it should turn golden brown in about 20 seconds.

Real Madrid celebrates Spain in Los Angeles with chef Jose Andres at SLS Hotel!

One of the perks of being a Fissler Foodie in Los Angeles is getting invited to fancy foodie events. Yes, it can be hard to tear us away from our own kitchens, but when it involves a special appearance by the world champion soccer team and food from one of the best chefs on the planet, we’re willing to put away the pressure cooker for a night. On Monday we attended a fantastic party at the SLS hotel given by The Spanish Tourist Office to celebrate Spain and particularly the capital, Madrid. MC Drew Carey introduced the guests of honor; the incredible athletes of Real Madrid, winners of the 2010 Soccer World Cup. Team members, including Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka, Iker Casillas, and Karim Benzema mingled with athletic icons from other sports, like Laird Hamilton and Gabrielle Reece, Lindsey Berg, Kim Glass, Kenneth Faried and Jeff Adrien. And it wouldn’t be a party in LA without Hollywood film stars like Gabrielle Union, Camilla Belle, Olivier Martinez, Jessie Williams and Scotty Granger who were joined by Spanish counterparts including Paz Vega, Jordi Molla and Elsa Pataky. You can see a sweet video of Real Madrid players talking about what they love about the home city of their team at: www.ineedspain.com and at 1:05 they start to talk about Spanish food, especially tapas! So, of course, tapas was the food we celebrated with that night. Jose Andres, the James Beard award winning Spanish chef of Bazaar, the restaurant at the SLS hotel, created an incredible array of tapas, from foie gras cotton candy, manchego cheese, gazpacho, jamón con tomate, tortilla española, huge pans of paella and luscious apricot flan and chocolate lace lollipops for dessert. If you want to create tapas at home check out one of Jose Andres’ cookbooks. He has written several cookbooks including the companion to the PBS series, Made in Spain: Spanish Dishes for the American Kitchen and Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America. We ended the night with a glass of cava (the Spanish bubbly) and a toast to Spain for its fabulous food and a culture that celebrates the pleasure in life.

Photos courtesy of Thomas Raab Photography.

Spring Rolls for the beginning of Summer

I was invited to Ojai for a Memorial Day weekend afternoon of food and friendship. Ojai, as you may know, is a gorgeous green valley of orange and lemon groves surrounded by beautiful hillsides with vineyards and oak forests leading up to rocky peaks. Down in the valley is a little village that epitomizes California charm. Our hostess, Catherine has a lovely home overlooking the valley, and that's where she invited a group of friends for a fabulous Italian influenced meal. I hadn't gotten the Italian message so I brought along a package of frozen Vietnamese Spring Rolls from Spring Kitchen. Well, good food is good food, so the spring rolls made a nice appetizer before the pasta and baked fish, despite the cultural dichotomy. I have three packages of Spring Kitchen spring rolls in the freezer, in three different flavors. Actually, I have two now, since I brought the shrimp spring rolls to this event. Pork and chicken and pork and shrimp are the other flavors and I'm saving those for the next party and a future blog post. Tina whipped together a dipping sauce with a Hoisin base and some other things she found in the fridge but if you order some spring rolls for your next party you can use the easy recipe for a dipping sauce at the Spring Kitchen site. We loved these spring rolls: easy and delicious.