Watercress and Blue Cheese Pesto

Seriously, you can make a pesto out of anything green. Just had some nuts, garlic, olive oil, and cheese. I had mezzaluna pasta stuffed with blue cheese so I wanted to make a complimentary pesto. Two minutes later, it was ready:

Ingredients

• 1 bunch of watercress
• 1 oz blue cheese
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 oz walnuts
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced

Toast the walnuts in a dry skillet for about 3-4 minutes. Chop finely and add to a bowl. Cut off the stem-y part of the watercress and chop the rest up. Add the watercress, blue cheese, minced garlic, and olive oil to the walnuts. Mix to create a paste, adding more olive oil as necessary. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Extra pesto can be frozen.

Guacamole Cheddar Bacon Sandwiches

I started off planning to make avocado BLTs and then got side-tracked when I spotted the colby jack cheese in the fridge. The acid and flavors of the guacamole provide a lovely counterpoint to the richness of the avocado and cheese. I like to saute my sandwiches in mayonnaise (yup, you read that right). Mayo gives sandwiches a beautiful golden crust.

I order avocados from "Avocado Box" so I routinely have a beautiful selection of delicious avocados that need to be eaten. It's a pleasure finding recipes for them. I find a plain avocado makes a great substitute for mayonnaise in a lot of sandwiches (like that BLT I had been planning to make!).







Ingredients - Serves 2

• 4 pieces of thick bread
• 2 ounces of thinly sliced colby jack (or any cheddar) cheese
• 3-4 pieces of thick cut bacon
• 1 tbl of mayonnaise

Guacamole

• 1 avocado
• 2 tsp of sea salt
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 2 tbl of lime juice
• A small bunch of cilantro, leaves chopped (optional)
• 1/2 serrano pepper, minced (optional)

Start cooking your bacon. Place bacon in a cold skillet, heat on medium, and flip routinely to cook evenly. Or cook however you prefer (I love baking bacon but microwaving works well, too). When finished, place on a paper towel to cool and then cut in half.

While the bacon sizzles, make your guacamole. Cube the avocado and place into a small bowl. Add salt, garlic, lime juice, and cilantro. Use a fork to mash the ingredients together.

Add a skim of mayonnaise to two slices of bread, flip over (you can place it on top of the other piece of bread so that the mayo doesn't get all over the counter), spread half of the guacamole on each slice, top each with 1 1/2 or 2 half-slices of bacon, and then add the cheese slices. Add mayo to the remaining two slices of bread and top the sandwich with them, mayo facing up.

Heat a skillet on medium and cook the sandwiches, flipping after about three minutes, when the bread is golden brown and crispy. Cut the sandwich in half and serve!

The cheese should be melty but if it isn't, a quick trick is to put the sandwich in the microwave for 15 seconds. Just enough to melt the cheese but not long enough to heat the rest of the ingredients or make the bread tough.

Ham and Endive Gratin

Ham and Endive Gratin was a common and very popular dish in our household during the winter months. Endives are plentiful in France and much easier to find than in the US so it was a warm and inexpensive mouth-pleaser! The challenges you will have making this dish in the US are finding endives of a decent size and good cooked ham. The ham used in France is called "jambon torchon"  - literally "dishtowel ham" because it's boiled while wrapped in a dish towel. In the US, this is usually called "boiled ham" and comes in, to be honest, rather unappetizing packages. Applegate Farms makes a pretty good uncured boiled ham although the slices are thin so you'll need to double them up. Your local deli might have a better selection. Our family served this without a sauce but I've seen it described frequently with a bechemel so I'm including that option here!




Ingredients - Serves 4

• 8 large endives (you can put two small ones together if necessary), cored
• 8 slices of boiled ham
• 8 oz of shredded swiss cheese

Optional Bechemel (white sauce)

• 2 tbl of unsalted butter
• 2 tbl of flour
• 1 cup of milk
• 1 cup of reserved endive cooking liquid.

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Heat a large pot of salted water to boiling. Add the endives and cook for 15 minutes. Lay the sliced ham out on a board. Drain the endives (reserving a cup of the cooking liquid if making a bechemel).

Melt the butter in a small saucepan. Once the butter stops foaming, add the flour and whisk to combine. Let the flour cook until it's a dark golden color. Add the milk and endive cooking liquid in small batches and whisk between each addition to keep lumps from forming. The mixture will be fairly loose. Continue simmering and whisking occasionally for about 8-10 minutes until the sauce thickens. Season with salt and pepper.

Lay an endive in the middle of each slice of ham and roll it up, placing it in a casserole dish. If using a bechemel, pour over the 8 rolls. Cover the ham/endive rolls with the shredded swiss cheese and place in the oven for 30 minutes. Turn the oven to broil for an additional 4 minutes to brown the cheese.

Serve with crusty bread. The ham/endive rolls are hot and the middle retains the heat for some time! Take small bites to avoid burns!