One Dish – Four Seasons is a new cookbook from celebrity Jordan Zucker.
The cover of Jordon Zucker’s new book One Dish – Four Seasons
This is a very clever, first of its kind cookbook. One Dish – Four Seasons: Food, Wine, and Sound – All Year Round is a thoughtfully laid out family collaboration and sophisticated labor of love. Zucker (who hosts Girls Guide to Sports, appeared on Food Network’s Grill It! with Bobby Flay, and was a recurring character on the popular TV series Scrubs) takes a base recipe, and by varying seasonally available ingredients, creatively builds four versions of each dish (with help from her expert cook mom): for winter, spring, summer and fall. Then the dish goes from good to great when matched with a complementing wine (with suggestions from her former sommelier dad) and hip tunes. So as you can see creating this book was truly a family affair.
Actress and Cookbook Author Jordon Zucker
One Dish – Four Seasons is enjoyable to cook from, just as much as it would be a great addition on a coffee table because it features loads of gorgeous full-color photos, easy-to-follow and humorously guided recipes, impeccable wine pairings, as well as integrative music soundtracks (with clever layers to the matches), and witty family anecdotes. This one-of-a-kind collaboration will bring families and friends together in the kitchen and inspire a creative approach using the base recipes
Mushroom Goat Cheese and Thyme Tart for Fall
Potato Fennel and Cheddar Tart for Winter.
In the How to Use This Book section of the book Jordon explains this unique concept. “One Dish—Four Seasons takes 20 everyday base recipes and churns out a winter, spring, summer, and fall version of each created by varying a few readily accessible ingredients. In all, we make 20 dishes x 4 seasons = 80 dishes + 1 cocktail x 4 = 84 recipes. Each dish (all 84 of them!) also gets paired with a wine and a music album. To me, these are the three pillars of entertaining that embody a vibe driven by each season. Food + Wine + Music. They’re kind of my religion.” Both of the tarts pictured above are from the basic Tomato Vegetable Tart recipe. So though they begin with the same basic recipe their is a flavorful variation for each season of the year.
Jordon starts off explaining that her acronym SWOOPS, Season With Olive Oil Pepper and Salt, is the base of most all recipes. And thinking about that I realized just how profound that it. Almost every savory recipe I have ever created starts off with putting some olive oil in a pan and seasoning each layer of the added ingredients with pepper and salt. So lesson learned, SWOOPS is king!
Perfect for Spring Jordon Zucker’s Spinach Hazelnut Salad with Peas
The entire book is written with wit and humor along with solid and delicious recipes. The pages are also peppered (pun intended) with lots of “Chef’s Lagniappe Lessons” which are in Jordon’s words “a little sumpin’ sumpin’ extra, a bonus, a gift. It’s a Creole term that I picked up in New Orleans, and since that city had such a profound effect on my life, I felt it was only appropriate to pay homage to it. In the course of developing the recipes, I found opportunities to provide a little further explanation, a little chef’s note, an extra tip. Where appropriate (or perhaps sometimes inappropriate, if I’m doing my job right), you will find a Chef’s Lagniappe Lesson as a little bonus of information to help you with the recipes, for good measure. Geaux to town with them!”
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Hazelnut Spinach Salad
This is a Spring recipe from One Dish – Four Seasons by Jordon Zucker.
- Total Time: 1 hour
- Yield: 6 servings 1x
Ingredients
DRESSING:
3 T orange juice, freshly squeezed
2 T balsamic vinegar
1/4 c olive oil
Salt and pepper
SALAD:
1 T olive oil1 red onion, chopped
8 oz. (about 1 c) string beans, trimmed and halved horizontally
Salt and pepper
1/2 c baby peas (can be frozen)
1/4 c hazelnuts
8 oz. strawberries, stemmed and sliced
1 (10-oz.) package pre-washed baby spinach
1/4 c blue cheese crumbles
Instructions
TO MAKE THE DRESSING: In a jar, combine the orange juice, vinegar, and olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Secure the lid to the jar. Shake, shake, shake! Make sure you re-shake, shake, shake at the last minute, right before dressing the salad. Like a Polaroid picture.
TO MAKE THE SALAD: Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until sweating, about 2 minutes. Add the string beans, season with salt and pepper, and toss! Continue cooking for 2 to 3 more minutes, until the string beans are al dente. Add the peas and cook for another minute, until warmed through.
In a separate pan over medium heat, toast the hazelnutsfor about 1 minute, until fragrant. Be sure not to burn them (this can happen if you abandon the stove for what you’re sure will be a 30-second score check but turns out to be longer). Add them to the skillet with the sautéed veggies and mix until the nuts are coated.Transfer the mixture to a large bowl. Add half of the dressing and too-us! Add the strawberries and too-us! Add the spinach and toss! Add the blue cheeseand too-us! I like to use tongs for all of this. Once everything is well coated, season to taste, adjust dressing level as desired, and serve!
Notes
WINE: Chardonnay PRODUCER: Domaine Serene REGION: Willamette Valley, OR
Technically I am an ABC (Anything But Chard) person. I want no part of a buttery or oaky white. I prefer my whites to smack me a bit. When I went wine tasting in Willamette I was embarrassed about digging their Chards. I was so intent on drowning in the Pinots that put Willamette on the map, it took me by surprise. The Chardonnay from Domaine Serene is made with very little new oak (in line with the region’s style) and is super crunchy. I’ll drink it with pride. Family-owned Domaine Serene (named after the winemaker’s daughter, Serene) has always been one of my favorite wineries (their Pinot Noirs are bomb diggity too!). The brightness of the Chardonnay plays well with the peas and has the acidity to cut through the sweetness of the strawberries.
OPP: Gran Moraine, Walter Scott, Evening Land
BAND: Alanis Morissette ALBUM: Jagged Little Pill YEAR/GENRE: (1995), Alt RockListen to this one with your Chardonnay, no black fly. Alanis surprised consumers with a move away from her previous dance pop into something far more alternative sounding. Lead single “You Oughta Know” features Dave Navarro on guitar and Flea on bass while also containing such lyrical gems for modern rock radio. I, for one, can’t go into a movie theater without hearing “an older version of me,” etc. She gets a little dark (death row, plane crashes) and dated. (Are smoking breaks still a thing?) Ironically, the album holds up and you’ll likely have one hand in your pocket and the other one catching a rogue pea
- Prep Time: 30 minutes
- Cook Time: 30 minutes
- Category: Salad
- Method: Sautéing
- Cuisine: American
