Green Olive Tapenade & Mozzarella French Toast Sandwiches

I know there are people out there who love a good sandwich, and whose imagination knows no bounds when it comes to dreaming up creative things to put into said sandwich.  I'm not one of them.  It might be a throw-back to all those school lunches I hated, but I confess to a certain amount of ambivalence towards sandwiches.

Should I happen to go into a cafe for lunch, the rest of what they have on offer would have to totally suck before I would choose a sandwich, and chances are, if the sandwich is the only appealing thing they have on offer, I would get up and leave.  My one exception to dining out on a sandwich is the classic BLT - who doesn't love that? - however, my rule for that is it's room service food called for in the middle of the night, and must be accompanied by a big bowl of french fries.

Likewise, it would be a rare thing for me to make a sandwich at home.  A slice of fresh bread or toast, with something delicious atop ... sure, but a sandwich ... no.

And there's an art to composing a sandwich, don't you think?  Someone round here loves a sandwich, which should contain ham, mustard, beetroot, cheese, tomato, lettuce, boiled egg, and mayonnaise.  Being asked to make said sandwich fills me with anxiety.  For a start, should the ham be at the bottom or the top?  In what order should the remaining ingredients be added?  Then, how on earth do you get all that to stay together, without everything collapsing out the sides as soon as you put the top layer of bread on?  It's all just fraught with difficulty.

I can, however, manage to pull off a "chip buttie", the obligatory accompaniment to fish and chips - take two slices of soft white bread, slather generously with butter, select half a dozen or so of the best, fattest chips, and envelop them between the two slices of bread.  Ditto the "bacon sarnie" - as above, but replace the chips with two or three rashers of bacon straight from the pan.

I do have a couple of other sandwiches in my repertoire ... these gorgeous little hearts of lemon, cream cheese and basil (the perfect pass around with a glass of bubbles), and these Chocolate Panettone French Toast Sandwiches (just the thing for a decadent Sunday brunch) ...

... or these Orange Mango French Toast Sandwiches served with a Honey Roasted Strawberry Compote.  Now, that's my kind of sandwich!

Which, at last, brings me to my point - if you want to get me to eat a sandwich, try soaking it in egg, frying it in butter, and calling it french toast.  You can guarantee I won't be turning my nose up at that.

So, with out theme this week at I Heart Cooking Clubs of Sandwich Sensations, the hunt was on through my Donna Hay books to come up with a sandwich that was going to excite me.  I did give more than passing thought to the idea of ice cream sandwiches, but in a time deprived week baking cookies and making ice cream was just not going to happen.  Of course, I know that Donna wouldn't blink twice at the idea of using store-bought cookies and ice cream, but somehow that just didn't exactly seem blogworthy.  Flicking through my books, I found all manner of steak sandwiches, burgers, baguettes filled with chicken or prosciutto, but that just wasn't what I was looking for.  I was after french toast, but I felt more inclined towards something savoury, than the sweet direction my french toast usually takes.  And then I found it ... on the Donna Hay website, this recipe for Fried Mozzarella & Olive Finger Sandwiches.

I began by making my own tapenade, using green olives and capers, rather than the store-bought black olive tapenade in the original recipe, and my tapenade recipe follows.  Realistically, if you can't be bothered, a store-bought tapenade is fine, but in defence of making your own - this will make more than you need for a sandwich, the leftover will keep for ages and makes a great addition to an antipasto platter, and homemade works out at a fraction of the price of store-bought.  Oh, and did I mention it really only takes about five minutes to make, using ingredients you probably already have on hand - you couldn't run out to the store and buy some in that time.

I hope you'll give this sandwich a try.  The tart, briny, lemony, herbaceous flavours of the tapenade are a great foil to the creamy mozzarella, and there is no better way I know to encase such a filling than with soft-on-the-inside-crunchy-on-the-outside french toast with a parmesan crust.  Yes, that's right ... parmesan crust ... didn't see that coming, did you?!

Green Olive Tapenade Recipe

A Couscous & Consciousness original

Makes about 1-1/2 cups

Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

1 cup green olives

(do yourself a favour and buy stone-in olives - pitting them is not difficult and the flavour is superior)

1-1/2 tablespoon capers

1/4 of a preserved lemon (skin and flesh)

(or substitute grated zest of a lemon and lemon juice to taste)

1x clove garlic

handful flat leaf parsley

freshly ground black pepper

extra virgin olive oil

Remove pits from olives and put them into your food processor - if your processor has a small bowl attachment that will be ideal.

Add capers, preserved lemon, garlic, parsley and pepper to the food processor.  Pulse a few times until everything is roughly chopped.  Now, with the motor running, add olive oil in a thin stream until you achieve a coarse paste.

Taste.  With the brininess of the olives and capers, as well as the salty preserved lemon, it is unlikely you will want to add any salt.  However, if you've used fresh lemon instead, you may feel the need to add a tiny bit of salt.

Store in the refrigerator.  Will keep at least a couple of weeks.

Green Olive Tapenade &

Mozzarella French Toast Sandwiches Recipe

Adapted from a recipe by Donna Hay

For one sandwich

Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

2x slices wholemeal sourdough bread

1 tablespoon green olive tapenade (see recipe above, or store-bought)

3x slices of mozzarella

1x egg

2 tablespoons milk

flaky sea salt & freshly ground black pepper

1 cup Parmesan cheese, freshly grated

1 tablespoon butter

Spread one slice of bread with the tapenade, top with the mozzarella, and then the remaining slice of bread.  Cut sandwich into three even-sized pieces.

In a shallow dish, whisk together the egg, milk, salt and pepper.  Spread the Parmesan out on a plate.

Melt the butter in a non-stick frying pan set over medium heat.

Meanwhile, dip the sandwiches in the egg mixture, leaving them a good minute on each side to soak up all the egg mixture.

Remove sandwiches from the egg mixture and press them into the Parmesan, coating both sides.

Transfer sandwiches to the hot frying pan, and cook until golden brown on both sides and the mozzarella is melting and gooey.

Serve immediately.

If you would like to get to know Donna Hay a little better, and to see all the Sandwich Sensations my friends have come up with, then visit I Heart Cooking Clubs and check out the links.

I'll also be sharing this post this week at See Ya In the Gumbo hosted by the lovely Michelle at Ms. enPlace, Weekend Cooking hosted by Beth at Beth Fish Reads, Souper (Soup, Salad & Sammie) Sundays hosted by my special friend Deb at Kahakai Kitchen, and at Foodie Fridays hosted by Designs by Gollam.

                          

Tomato, Basil & Mozzarella Salad

We're all well acquainted with that old line, "When life gives you lemons ....", etc.  Well, right now, life is giving me tomatoes - lots and lots and lots of them.  This is not a complaint, mind.  Having just grown my first ever successful tomato crop, I still get a huge thrill out of harvesting a big bowl of these beauties every day.

Many of them end up in pasta dishes;  roasted with potatoes, black olives, and a piece of snapper;  grilled on the barbeque;  or thickly sliced and sauteed in butter with lots of freshly ground black pepper, then tipped over hot toast and topped with a poached egg.  In the weeks ahead, many will end up as pasta sauce or slow-roasted and stashed in the freezer for use during the winter months to come.

But if you are lucky enough to be able to pick tomatoes, straight from the garden, at the absolutely perfect moment of ripeness and still warm from the sun, then there is no doubt that the best way to enjoy them is very simply - teaming them up with the best quality ingredients you can lay your hands on.  To me that means basil, also picked straight from the garden;  the best extra virgin olive oil you can afford - I used Moon Over Martinborough's Crescent Moon Blend;  and mozzarella, buffalo would be ideal if you can find it and your budget will run to it - if not, have a go at making your own, as I did.

Tomato, Basil & Mozzarella Salad Recipe

(This is really more of a method rather than a recipe - quantities are not critical)

Vegetarian

tomatoes, as many as you like

(use an assortment of colours & sizes, even including green ones)

mozzarella, one large ball

fresh basil leaves, generous handful

flaky sea salt

extra virgin olive oil

Cut tomatoes - some into thick slices, some into wedges, some roughly chopped.  Smaller cherry tomatoes can be just halved or even left whole if they are tiny.  The point is to avoid "uniformity".  Spread tomatoes over a large flat platter.

Cut mozzarella into rough slices, or tear into pieces, as you like, and distribute amongst the tomatoes.

Sprinkle liberally with sea salt.

Roughly tear basil leaves into pieces and strew over the salad.

Lastly, drizzle everything liberally with extra virgin olive oil.

Allow to stand at room temperature for around 30 minutes before serving to allow the flavours to mingle.

Of course you can serve this as an accompaniment to just about anything - simple oven-roasted chicken, steak or fish straight off the barbeque - the possibilities are really limitless.  Personally, I like it best on its own (I can easily make a meal of this), with some good, crusty bread on the side to mop up the juices.

Eating a dish like this always puts a smile on my face.  But so much more than that, it makes my heart smile, and it humbles me.  It reminds me that, no matter how clever we think we can get in the kitchen, we can never improve on nature's simple packaging - the best food of all is that which hasn't been messed with, but which has just been paired with a few other "like-minded" ingredients.  Like a good marriage, they don't compete with each other, they simply bring out the best in each other, and make us feel better for having been in their company.

I'm sharing this post at Gallery of Favourites, hosted by my friend April at The 21st Century Housewife;  at See Ya In the Gumbo, hosted by the lovely Michelle at Ms. enPlace;  at Foodie Friday, hosted by Designs by Gollum; and at My Meatless Mondays hosted by Chaya at My Sweet and Savory.

                    

Rocket, Fennel & Mozzarella Salad & NZFBA Conference Day 2

You may recall that I left you last week at the end of the first day of our NZ Food Bloggers conference.  But things didn't end there.  There is much more to share with you and, in usual fashion, if you keep reading, I promise you food - a wonderful Rocket, Fennel & Mozzarella Salad to be exact.

So, day one of our conference wound up with all of our participants being whisked off to a secret location, which turned out to be Floyds in Island Bay, for a pop-up dinner and wine matching event.  The evening began with a cocktail making mini master class with Justin McKenzie of Liquid Winks, who served us up a gorgeous cocktail that definitely whetted the appetite.

And then the food, prepared by chef Ben Barton of Pop Dining, began to roll out and it just kept coming - course, after course, after delicious course, with wines matched to the food by James Pederson of Floriditas.

As you might expect from any gathering of food bloggers around a dinner table, there were more iPhones on the table than cutlery, and as each course rolled out cameras flashed and tweeters tweeted.  There were sighs of satisfactions and delight;  wonderful and stimulating conversations took place as we got to know new bloggers and reconnected with others already known to us;  and, of course, there was huge amounts of laughter.  It was a great night, and the last cab load of us to leave rolled home very satisfied and more than a little weary.

Day two of our conference began, like day one, with chocolate.  Our first event of the day being a mini master class and chocolate tasting with Jo Coffey from L'Affaire au Chocolat.  Jo shared with us a wealth of information and knowledge about everything from bean to block, and although I've always had a love affair with chocolate, I certainly have a new found appreciation for it.

Next up was Rachel Taulelei of Yellow Brick Road talking to us about Sustainable Fishing and Seafood.  Rachel is a very engaging speaker, clearly passionate about her business of sourcing and supplying responsibly caught seafood to the restaurant industry.  Ethical eating and sourcing of the food we put on our tables each day is a subject which is dear to my heart, so Rachel's session was definitely one of the highlights of the conference for me.  Setting aside the fact that Rachel could actually talk about two flies crawling up a wall and make it sound interesting and funny, her message really resonated with me.

Time then to break for morning tea, prepared by the Le Cordon Bleu pastry chefs, accompanied by some treats from The Collective Dairy.  The cheese scones were divine, but you had to be quick to get to them before Mairi, and the Collective Dairy treats were particularly welcomed by those of us who had skipped breakfast.  Love that mango yoghurt drink.

Next we moved on to a soda tasting with Joseph Slater of the Six Barrel Soda Co. Six Barrel Soda Co make small batch soda syrups using fresh fruit, spices and nuts.  Their flavours include:  lemon, ginger and kola nut, all of which we got to sample, as well as cherry & pomegranate, raspberry & lemon, lime, and vanilla cream.  Personally, I've never been much of a cola fan, but was surprised to discover that I loved the kola nut - deliciously spicy and not overly sweet - in fact it was my favourite of the three that we sampled.  Can't wait for someone to start stocking this in Nelson so I can get my hands on some.

With the sun almost over the yard arm, it was time to turn our thoughts to wine and an address on the State of the Vines from Chris Archer of Archer McRae.  Just to make sure it wasn't a dry argument, we sampled their surprising new product - Ritzling Bottled Happiness.  I say surprising, because I was quite prepared not to like this - Ritzling is in fact a sparkling riesling and (perhaps unreasonably) I fully expected it to be unpleasantly sweet.  However, accompanied by a wedge of lime, I found it to be an absolute delight, and it fully delivered on its promise of being bottled happiness.  I foresee consuming quite a few bottles of this over the forthcoming summer.

After suitable libation, it was time to move onto a mini master class and lunch, courtesy of the lovely ladies from Little Penang.  The master class was both fun and informative and the lunch sublime.  I love Asian flavours at the best of times, but the Nonya curry really rocked my boat - definitely one of the stand-out meals of the weekend for me.  These photos do not even come close to doing that beautiful meal justice.

After lunch we were treated to another wonderful mini master class, this time with the Queen of Dumplings, Vicky Ha from The Dumpling House.  This was a great workshop - we all had a chance to make our own dumplings, some savoury, some sweet.  Vicky was good enough to share some of her recipes with us and I can't wait to give these a try at home - job for a wet Saturday afternoon I think.  That's my dumpling in the foreground of the photo below, and Alessandra Zecchini's behind it - a couple of very good attempts I thought.

From there we had another one of our breakout sessions, and while some chose to do a pastry making class with the Le Cordon Bleu Head Patisserie Tutor, I opted for making mozzarella in under an hour with Alli Pirrie-Mawer.  I loved this workshop.  Alli is a great teacher, and she definitely made mozzarella seem easy.  So much so, that I couldn't wait to try it again when I got home, and it is my own home-made mozzarella which makes an appearance in the recipe I'm sharing with you today.  Alli teaches these classes regularly at her Auckland cooking school, The Gourmet Gannet, so if you live up there or are passing through I highly recommend taking a class with her if you can.

Our last session of the day was a Tea Tasting & Food Match with John van Forp of t Leaf T.  We tried three different teas - Jasmine Dragon Pearls, Kawakawa Fire, and New Zealand Breakfast, with samples of all three turning up in our goodie bags.  I especially loved the Jasmine Dragon Pearls and the Kawakawa Fire, which you may recall I used in the upside down pineapple cake I shared with you last week.

And so, all good things must come to end.  It was a fantastic couple of days, and I have no doubt that every single person agreed that Shirleen, of Sugar & Spice ... and All Things Nice, and Alli, of Pease Pudding, did a fantastic job of organising everything to a highly professional standard, and they now have a job for life organising future Food Bloggers Conferences.  Of course, such an event would not have been possible without the support of so many extraordinary sponsors - incredible people who gave of their time and fabulous products to ensure that we not only had a great conference but went home with bags full of wonderful goodies to try.  Please check out this page to see all the incredible people and companies who helped to made this such a fantastic event, and if you get the opportunity do try some of their amazing products.  I'm not just saying that because they gave us free stuff - yes, they did, but having now munched and sampled my way through two big goodie bags, I can also tell you with absolute sincerity that this free stuff also happens to be the really good stuff.  Keep watching this space for more recipes using some of these great products.  Lastly, if you happen to be a New Zealand food blogger (whether you are living in New Zealand or abroad), and if after reading this you feel inspired to join up, then head over here - it will cost you nothing and I promise you won't regret it.

And now, as your reward, for being so patient and reading so far, I give you salad.  The jumping off point for this salad came from using the home-made mozzarella I was inspired to make after doing Alli's master class at the conference.  Of course, if you're not up for making your own mozzarella, you could use whatever you can get your hands on - buffalo would be ideal.  I had some rocket (that's arugula to some of you) and fennel in the fridge, which seemed like they would be good mates with the mozzarella, and I wanted to team them all up with some of the gorgeous Moon Over Martinborough extra virgin olive oil that was in our conference goodie bags.  The quantity given below was perfect for me as a main meal, but it would also make a great side to just about anything and as such would serve two to three.  This salad is light, crisp, fresh ... all the things a spring salad should be.

Rocket, Fennel & Mozzarella Salad Recipe

Serves 1 person as a meal or

Serves 2-3 persons as a side dish

Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

(Note:  I think of this dish as being "vegetarian-enough" for me, but look for vegetarian mozzarella if you want to make it strictly so)

1x ball buffalo mozzarella

(I used about 4 small balls of home-made mozzarella)

1x lemon, zest & juice

extra virgin olive oil, best quality you can afford

(I used Moon Over Martinborough's Crescent Moon Blend)

flaky sea salt

freshly ground pepper

2-3 large handfuls of baby rocket (arugula)

1/2 large fennel bulb (or 1 small one)

dash of maple syrup

Cut mozzarella into slices about 1cm (1/3 inch) thick and place into a small bowl.  Add the grated zest of half the lemon, and juice of the whole lemon, along with a generous slosh of olive oil (about a tablespoon).  Season with flaky sea salt and freshly ground pepper.  Season well to combine and set aside to marinate for a couple of hours.

To prepare the fennel, remove the fronds if there are any and set them aside to garnish your finished salad with.  Cut off the woody stalks protruding from the bulb, and remove the thick outer "leaves" - discard.  Cut the bulb in half and remove the woody core, which you should also discard.  Then slice as thinly as you possibly can - a mandoline is especially useful for this job if you have one.

To assemble the salad, arrange the rocket and fennel over a serving platter.  Remove mozzarella from its marinade, reserving the marinade, and arrange over the salad.

The marinade is now about to become the dressing for your salad.  Add another generous slosh of olive oil and a dash of maple syrup to balance out the tartness of the lemon, and whisk to a vinaigrette consistency.  Taste and adjust any of the seasonings to suit your palate. 

Drizzle the dressing over the salad and, if you have any fennel fronds, strew them over the top.

I hope you enjoy this salad.  I'm no expert on food and wine matching, but I'm guessing that a drop or two of that Ritzling Bottled Happiness would be good company with this ... if only I'd kept mine long enough to find out.  Still now that I know where to get it in Nelson, you can bet that I will be able to confirm this recommendation in the near future.