Pickled Vegetables

I don't only play with meat.  I love the acid, and the vinegar flavor of anything pickled when eating charcuterie.  It breaks up the fattiness of a terrine, goes great with any salumi.  This is one of my favorites here.  The crispness of the Cauliflower, and the sweetness from the fresh carrots are great.  And the little zip from the peppers.  I make mine a little different, I use a mixture of Champagne vinegar and distilled white vinegar.  The Champagne gives more sweetness and depth of flavor, where the distilled white vinegar gives you the punch of acidity.

The Best Salsa Recipe around!!

I know that is a big statement.  There are so many types of salsa.  Fresh salsa, cooked salsa, fruity salsa.... where does it end.  It's like a little Mexican bubba gump.  I am a huge fan of any type of salsa.  This one here I started making a few years ago and have perfected.  It is a very rustic type of Salsa Rojas, a cooked Aztec style salsa.  There maybe some ingredients that you don't thing should be in salsa, but suspend disbelief this stuff is really good.  Big part of this is getting the ingredients as fresh as possible.  I went to the Winchester Farmers market, here in Memphis.

This place is great.  They have produce, and items from all over the world.  Specializing in Mexican, and Asians.  There fish is so damn fresh it is swimming.  I recommend going to this place on Tuesdays and Thursdays that is when they get their fresh fish and produce.  Sundays are freaking nuts at this place.  Onto the salsa.  First thing I do is get all my ingredients together.

Papa's French Dressing

My family has always been all about food.  My grandfather Edward Ptacek Sr. was a huge influence with me and my culinary devotion.  He is the one that got my mom going and in turn me from her.  He cooked for a huge family, and put his heart and soul into it.  I was at the store with my cousin the other day and we were craving some of Papa's dressing.  This is nothing fancy, but I have adjusted it a little from his original.  Every time I taste it I get taken back to the house on Marshfield, sitting at the table, making sure my elbows did not touch the table and sharing a meal with my grandparents.  He would pull this dressing out of the fridge in a huge mason jar that had garlic cloves suspended in it....  Sorry I started drooling.  Anyway here you are.