Successfully avoiding a trip to the grocery again

You know the scenario: You're pressed for time to get that dish done by dinnertime or in time to leave with it for someone else's house and you realize you don't have as much of one ingredient as you thought you had. The recipe won't turn out the way you have come to expect. You're not sure whether you can fudge it with using less, but you have to try anyway because you've already started mixing the other parts.

This recipe is about embracing the unexpected and foisting it off on your friends at a potluck, which I did. And about avoiding a trip to the grocery for which there is no time, which I also did and made it to that potluck on time. And it's about finding another tasty use for backyard rosemary and other gardeners' summer tomatoes that show up unannounced at our place or appear in our Henry's Farm CSA box.

Running-Out-of-Cornmeal Cornbread (with bell and whistles)
alterations to Cook's Illustrated "All Purpose Cornbread" recipe
at least 6 servings

5 ounces unbleached all-purpose flour
4 ounces whole-wheat flour
3 ounces cornmeal
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp table salt
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
3 1/2 ounces fresh cooked corn kernels (or thawed frozen corn)
1 cup unsweetened kefir (or buttermilk)
2 large eggs
8 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
large pinch dried rosemary, crushed (this is the bell from my backyard plant)
one to two ripe garden tomatoes (this is a whistle)
a pinch of kosher salt or sea salt (this is a whistle)

Heat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Spray 8x8-inch glass baking dish with nonstick cooking spray. Whisk flours, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, salt in a bowl until combined and set aside.

In food processor or blender, process sugar, corn, kefir and eggs until combined. 

Make a well in the center of dry ingredients and pour in wet mixture. Fold together for a few turns of the spatula/spoon. Add melted butter and rosemary and fold until dry ingredients are just moistened.

Pour batter into baking dish. Smooth the top. Slice the tomatoes thinly and lay the slices on top of the batter so they just touch each other. Sprinkle with kosher/sea salt.

Bake about 25 to 35 minutes until golden brown and a toothpick inserted it the center comes out clean. Tomato slices will look as if they have sunken into the top. Take directly from oven to potluck and serve cornbread still warm out of the baking dish.

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Two more ways to use a mountain of chili powder

I taught a fermented foods workshop here at our house in July and, in the course of researching recipes and techniques, decided I had to finally try to make kimchi/kimchee (choose your favorite English spelling, it's 김치 in Korean).

The three different batches of white radish kimchi I made before I got one that was edible (sorry about that still-super-salty batch you were subjected to, Mom and Dad) is another story. This story is about the chili powder that goes into kimchi.

There's an Asian grocery here in town that I like to frequent called Shanghai Market. The proprietor always knows which item to recommend. You see a shelf with five different types of soy sauce in several brands from three different countries and don't know which you want? This guy can tell you what the Japanese cooks are using, what the Chinese restaurants prefer and what sweet soy sauce is good for, plus let you know the run-down from least to most expensive. He helps me translate the labels on  pickled vegetables so I know what's in the package and hasn't yet said "I don't have that" to my occasional requests for unusual ingredients.

He can also sell you the right Korean chili powder to make kimchi. The only question you have to be able to answer is, "Would you like five pounds or three pounds?"

Once I took a minute to get over my disbelief that any ground spice would be sold in such massive quantities, I decided on three pounds and immediately started thinking about how to give away at least two pounds. This is the gallon jar I stored it in when I got home. It’s sitting on the table next to a 12-oz glass. 

Of course, I had to start giving it away to everyone I could think of who might be even just a little bit interested in trying some. And for every person who said yes, there was at least 1/3 to ½ cup. And I still have enough to make several batches of kimchi at home. Heck, I’ve made three batches already and still have more than a cup of chili powder left. I figure the original three-pound quantity must be enough to make batches of kimchi for a family of eight to eat every day for an entire year. And have enough powder to make each batch really spicy.

So, clearly this chili powder needs to turn up in some other dishes, too. The first was a savory rice porridge, since I was inspired to try more savory breakfasts after reading Fuschia Dunlop’s Every Grain of Rice Chinese home-cooking book this summer. 

Breakfast Porridge “Better Luck Next Time”
Serves two, or one VERY hungry person who doesn’t mind the taste

1 Tbsp butter or vegetable oil
1 tsp Korean chili powder
2 cups water
1 cup leftover cooked rice
1 Tbsp miso paste with dashi included
10 sorrel leaves
2 eggs
toasted sesame oil to taste

Melt butter or vegetable oil in a large pan. Cook Korean chili powder in the oil. Pour in water and rice. As water nears boiling point, stir in miso paste. Drop in sorrel leaves and crack eggs on top. Let eggs poach without stirring them as the rice and sorrel cook. When finished, drizzle with toasted sesame oil.

Sadly, I would not recommend making this one again the same way. I liked the look of the reddish stew with cooked rice and the poached egg on top, but sorrel was the wrong choice of vegetable for the dish. Too sour. I was going for a salty-fishy flavor with the miso that has dashi in it, but this was an odd combination with lemony sorrel. Sorrel is also not good with toasted sesame oil, so clearly a different green is important for the next try.

The next soup was a light dinner inspired by a pork and tofu soup recipe in my Korean cookbook. It uses some of the same ideas from the breakfast recipe, but meshes them with this much better soup recipe’s ingredients and some Malabar spinach from our weekly vegetable box. This attempt turned out to be good enough that Andrew and I each wanted seconds and he asked me to make it again whenever we get the same greens in the CSA box. 

Malabar spinach is not actually spinach, but a different equatorial plant that has a spinach-like flavor. Its texture is a bit slippery like okra when cooked in soup. 

Here are some of the soup ingredients lined up on the cutting board, waiting their turn to go into the soup pot:

Asian-style Rice and Vegetable Soup with Malabar Spinach 
Serves 2 to 4

2 Tbsp canola oil with 1 tsp dark sesame oil
½ cup small-diced onion
2 garlic cloves, smashed
2 cups Malabar spinach leaves, measured and then chopped
4 oz shiitake mushrooms, thickly sliced
1 cup leftover cooked rice
1 tsp Korean chili powder
8 oz firm tofu, cubed or cut in strips
2 Tbsp miso with dashi included
3 cups water
soy sauce 

Heat oil, cook onion until tender, add garlic and cook a minute or so. Stir in chili powder. Add mushrooms and cook until tender. Add rice, separate the grains with your spoon, pour in water and add tofu. Bring to a boil. Stir in miso paste and Malabar spinach and cook until spinach wilts. Serve with soy sauce on the side so each diner can season to taste.

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Summer Skillets are back!

The corn, squash and beans "Three Sisters" are ripe and ready to eat this month. We've eaten sweet corn, zucchini and "beans and greens," in addition to plucking the backyard green beans and eating them straight off the bush when they are small and tender. I love summer squashes like zucchini and pattypan and cucumber, and I'm waiting impatiently for the winter squashes to ripen on their long vines stretching out of my garden box toward the house.

All of these "Three Sisters" taste great with another of the summer/fall staples in our area, cooking greens. This year, one Swiss chard plant from some pretty old seeds was successful in the backyard box. It's time to ramp up the enthusiasm for greens because from here on out in the CSA box, I predict there will be a minimum of two greens each week.

The ubiquitous and ever-flexible zucchini teams up with our county's major export product, corn, and a bit of earthy chard in this summertime skillet. The quantity is large enough that the Dutch oven or chicken fryer is a more appropriately-sized cooking vessel. It's quick to prepare, provided you've cut off the corn kernels and kept them from a previous meal of sweet corn this week.

Smoky Summer Vegetable Skillet
2 to 3 Tbsp olive oil
1/3 cup sliced onion
3 cloves garlic, smashed with flat side of knife
1 foot-long, fat zucchini (scrape out seeds if it has tough, mature seeds in it)
handful of Swiss chard, approximately 8-12 oz weight
the kernels cut off from 6 ears of cooked sweet corn
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp Spanish smoked paprika
salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil over medium-high heat in a large, deep skillet/Dutch oven. Saute onion in oil. While it is cooking, cut zucchini into long strips and dice. Add garlic to the onion and stir one minute. Add diced zucchini and stir occasionally. While zucchini is cooking, clean chard and strip the leaves off the stems. Chop the leaves, save the stems for another dish or compost them.

Put corn into pan with cumin and smoked paprika when zucchini is somewhat translucent. Stir in chard when corn has started to heat through. Stir and cook briefly until chard wilts. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Serving suggestions: by itself; on rice, quinoa or couscous; with bread or on top of toast; topped with a fried egg.

This next recipe was today's lunch, created and eaten hastily when I issued a spontaneous lunch invitation to two of Andrew's friends, who were passing through to drop him off on their way back home from Indianapolis. 

Tart, tangy tomatillos are probably cheating on my low-acid diet, but they are so good with rice and beans and I didn't want to waste this treat from the CSA box. I tried to leave most of them in the serving dish and only put a few slices on my plate. Sharing is better than eating them all myself, right?

When paired with a large salad, this dish served four. If it were a one-dish meal, I'd say it is two portions.

Tangy Tomatillo-Bean Skillet

4 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp smoked Spanish paprika
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1 pint tomatillos, washed
1 cup leftover cooked rice
One 15-oz can black beans, rinsed and drained
salt and pepper to taste

Cut tomatillos into thick vertical slices, then cut each slice in half to make half-moon shapes. Heat olive oil to medium-high heat in a nonstick skillet. Saute onion until starting to become translucent, add garlic and stir one minute. Add tomatillos and spices and stir frequently until tomatillos are tender. Add rice, stirring and cutting with spoon to separate rice grains. Add black beans and heat through, stirring frequently, and season with salt and pepper.

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This post brought to you by foods that start with the letter G

Food is arriving weekly through Henry's Farm CSA again ("what's a CSA?" check this link), and at the beginning and end of the season, the major vegetable group is GREENS. We eat a lot of salad and stir-fries and search around for other options to keep up our interest in greens. When gnocchi (small Italian potato dumplings) went on sale recently, I bought a couple packages and figured they'd eventually come in handy, so bring on the unfamiliar greens!

Lamb's quarters showed up at the CSA pickup, and I traded some onions to get some more of this stuff in the hopes that we'd like it enough to eat it for two meals.
"Use as you would spinach" was the take-home message about this edible weed on the Brockman Family Farming blog. So Andrew and I did so with this earthy-tasting dish that was a team effort. We discovered that like most of the cooking greens, these are great cooked with garlic. Garlic shows up twice in our recipe: once as minced cloves, once in the pesto.
If you have leftovers, I recommend adding a bit of liquid when reheating to soften up the gnocchi.

Earthy Greens and Gnocchi
serves 4

2 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 large clove garlic, minced
12 oz white button or cremini mushrooms, sliced 
One 17-oz package potato gnocchi
grated parmesan cheese, optional
1 bunch (about 8 oz. by weight) lamb's quarters, spinach, or Swiss chard
1 Tbsp basil pesto
1 Tbsp dried Italian seasoning
salt and pepper to taste

Clean all dirt and grit from greens, remove stems and chop greens down to bite-size if needed. Heat water to cook gnocchi according to package directions. Cook other ingredients while waiting for water to heat. Heat oil over medium-high heat in a large skillet. Saute onion until tender, then add garlic and mushrooms and continue cooking. Stir in lamb's quarters, then Italian seasoning. Keep warm on low heat while waiting for gnocchi to cook. When greens are wilted, turn off heat and stir in pesto. Drain gnocchi and add to mixture in skillet. Season with salt and pepper. Serve with grated parmesan if desired.

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Pork, cabbage, apples, grains: several stews

In August, I taught a class I called "Early Period Cooking Demo: Recipes for 10th Century England" at an SCA event. I've been trying to push myself this year to create recipes that could be appropriate for my 10th Century Saxon/Norse persona and to practice starting and controlling open fires for cooking.

My desire for the class was to offer 1) a demonstration of the ways in which a fire for cooking is maintained differently from a fire for warming a room, 2) a demonstration of different cooking methods known to people in 10th Century England, 3) recipes that could be appropriate to the time and place I'm portraying, a task complicated by the lack of recipe books for this period, 4) recipes I could reproduce on camping outings to reduce my reliance on modern recipes and foods.

The following recipe is influenced by two things: reading about food combinations in Ann Hagen's Bible of early English cooking, Anglo-Saxon Food and Drink: Production, Processing, Distribution and Consumption; and thinking about combinations of foods that would be in season together for a culture that was restricted in dietary choices by seasonal availability of foodstuffs. Bacon is a pork product that can be kept a few months in a cool place after the slaughter of a hog, so it's not tied to only one season. Apples, cabbages and fresh herbs are fall foods known to Anglo-Saxons as well as modern Americans. It's possible that my choice of kale for the later two versions of the stew is more authentic than heading cabbages, but I'm not certain the heading cabbages were unknown to 10th Century England.

Pork, Apple and Cabbage Stew
serves 4-6

1/2 pound wood-smoked bacon or other fresh or preserved pork, chopped
lard or bacon drippings or butter, if needed
1 large or 2 small onions, chopped
1 small green cabbage, cored and chopped
1 pound apples, peeled, cored and chopped
2 to 3 sprigs fresh thyme
1 small sprig fresh rosemary, chopped fine or 1/2 tsp dried rosemary leaves
1/2 cup barley, oat groats or wheat berries
chicken broth or water
salt and pepper to taste

Cook bacon in pot until it starts to crisp, or cook other pork in fat until browned. Skim some fat with a spoon if desired. Add onions and cook in fat until translucent. Add cabbage, apples, grain and herbs, then cover with water or broth and bring to a low boil over open flame. Move pot over to cooler area of fire and simmer with pot covered until the grains are tender. Stir occasionally. Add more water/broth if stew starts to become too thick and sticks to bottom of pot. Season with salt and pepper.

On the first cooking attempt, this stew was tasty. The apples were an interesting sweet contrast to the savory bacon and herbs. It was a little watered down because I added probably twice the amount of broth that would be necessary to keep the grains moist. It may have been more flavorful had I left in the bacon drippings, but I spooned them off to use in making a flatbread for the class.

Later at home, I tried out a similar stew to combine leftover bacon from the class, some rice that had been left from a previous meal, and kale from a friend's garden. Kale is a member of the same family of vegetables as green cabbage, so I figured I couldn't go wrong. The herbs are replaced by cumin, one of my favorite spices.

With this photo, I learn that really good food photographers wait until the stew is done steaming to take the photo so the food shows up clearly. Unlike those really good food photographers, if I let the food cool off first, I have to eat a cold supper.


Pork, Apple and Cabbage Stew play-at-home version
serves 4

1/2 pound hardwood-smoked bacon, chopped
2 small onions, chopped
1 bunch kale (large handful of stems), destemmed and chopped
2 large apples, peeled, cored and chopped
3 cups chicken stock
1 tsp cumin 
1 heaping cup leftover brown rice
salt and pepper to taste

For home stove, never mind the bits in the directions about moving the pot around on the fire.

While camping out this past weekend, I made the stew from memory over our little campfire and added in some fresh radishes from our weekly box from Henry's Farm. Once again, kale from our friends' garden substitutes for green cabbage. Thank you, "vegetable fairies" Viv and Nicole! I didn't chop the bacon in order to keep my cutting board from having both uncooked meat and raw veggies on it. Because I cooked it very crisp, it fell apart into bite-sized chunks as I stirred it around the pot with other ingredients. I forgot to bring onions, so this stew was yet another variant of the original. I left in the bacon grease because there was no other recipe to use it in later. The finished stew needed very little salt.

Pork, Apple and Cabbage Stew another way
serves 3 very hungry people
 
1/2 pound hardwood-smoked bacon
8 small radishes, chopped
2 large apples, cored and chopped, but with peels on
1 pound kale, destemmed and chopped
1/2 cup barley
3 cups chicken stock
2 tsp fresh thyme leaves stripped from stems
freshly ground white peppercorns and salt to taste

Follow directions as in first stew, but leave all the bacon drippings in the pot and omit the step of cooking onions in bacon fat.

Everything tastes better when eaten outside, and this stew is no exception to that rule. On a chilly fall night when dinner wasn't ready until after dark, it warmed me and my two camping companions physically and emotionally from the inside out.
 

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Late summer bounty: corn and kale

It's been a tough year for corn harvests here in McLean County, but there have been a few ears in our CSA box a couple of times this summer. When it came along with kale and I needed to put together a fast dinner because we were already hungry before going to get the CSA box, I made this quick and hearty dish:

Quick Corn and Kale with Black Beans
serves 3 or 4 as a main dish
could be stretched by serving over rice or quinoa

3 ears fresh sweet corn
olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 or 3 cloves garlic, minced
1 bunch kale (about one pound), de-stemmed and chopped
black beans, one 15 oz can, drained and rinsed
1/2 cup chicken stock
1 tsp cumin
Spanish sweet smoked paprika to taste
salt and pepper to taste

Shuck the ears of corn as soon as possible after picking or purchase and steam 10 minutes in a couple of inches of water in a covered pot. While corn is cooking, prepare the onion, garlic, beans, kale. Cut corn kernels off the ears when they are cool enough to handle. Saute the onion and garlic in enough olive oil to thinly cover the bottom of your pan. When the onion is getting tender, add the kale and stir until it wilts. Add the beans, corn, cumin and smoked paprika, then pour over chicken stock and simmer until the beans are cooked through, the kale has become tender, and some of the stock has evaporated. Season with salt and pepper and serve.

Spanish smoked paprika is also known as pimentón. It tastes like peppers roasted over a flame right in your mouth. It is typically sold in two varieties, sweet and hot. The sweet one isn't actually sweet at all, it's just smoky and not as chili-spicy as the hot variety.

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No exact amounts of anything!

Some delicious ideas from this month's cooking experiments, but no exact recipes.

1. Eggplant and potato stew with lemon basil

• one small Italian-style eggplant
• new red potatoes from Henry's Farm CSA box -- the potatoes are pink inside!
• chicken broth powder and water
• one sprig's worth of leaves from Henry's Farm lemon basil
• cook together over low-ish heat on camp stove for a very lemony-tasting stew that is almost too sophisticated for camping

2. "I don't feel like turning on the oven when it's 90-plus degrees outside" zucchini casserole

•  one pound of ground turkey
•  a whole bunch of zucchini, thinly sliced
• my favorite seasonings that go well with turkey: Penzey's Spices Mural of Flavor mix, sage, Lawry's seasoned salt, pepper
• one can condensed cream of mushroom soup
• the rest of the box of potatoes from Henry's Farm plus some more that were in the cupboard
• brown the turkey in a bit of oil, add spices, add potatoes, soup, zucchini and a splash of water and simmer covered until the zucchini and potatoes are fully cooked. Could all be covered and baked instead on a cooler day.

3.  Sausage and kale pasta

• heat salted water for a pound of pasta
• when water is just about ready to add pasta, put first ingredients into pan for sauce, then cook pasta while waiting for sausage to brown
• sauce: olive oil with 3 cloves smashed garlic and about one pound Italian sausage (I would have used local turkey sausage, but I only could find local pork sausage -- Twin Oak Meats sausage is very lean) is all cooked together until sausage is mildly browned. A few ladlefuls of pasta water and a couple handfuls of kale are added at the same time. Cook covered until saucy but no longer watery, then mix together with drained pasta.

4. Tourteletes
A modern-equipment take on tiny medieval fig pies. The original recipe in Forme of Cury calls for deep-frying the pies, but I decided to bake them instead.

• 1 part butter cut together with 2 parts flour, a sprinkling of water to bind into rollable crust
• filling: chopped dried mission figs, ground cloves, ground nutmeg, ground pepper, all moistened with a) water with saffron moistened and crushed in it and b) honey
• roll out crust thinly, cut into circles with large cookie cutter, place filling into circles and fold over to make little half-moon-shaped pies, seal pies and bake at 350 degrees until starting to turn golden-brown

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Multicolor currant-berry jam

It's backyard berry season again at the home of our friends Susan and Larry, and they kindly let me and Andrew pick to our heart's content in the currant and black raspberry bushes. Currant bushes, having no thorns, are much kinder on the hands than raspberry bushes. The fruit hangs in these adorable little vertical clumps, with the berries on the end of the clump sometimes ripening and getting larger before the others. It's much easier to gauge ripeness of red currants than white currants. White currants seem to be the same color whether they are ripe or not.

Susan informed me that currants have an impressively high natural amount of pectin, so they make very firm jam and can be a great addition to a jam of other fruits that would otherwise need long cooking with lots of sugar and lemon juice or pectin-rich store-bought canning additives to make a good jam. I'm not too familiar with currants, having never cooked with them before, so I wanted a jam that mostly tasted like currants so I'd know if I liked them. With the day's harvest of currants and blackberries,

it was just the right volume of fruit to fill a few jam jars. I didn't even have to measure the sugar closely, I just added enough to make the mixture a little sweeter.

Susan was so right about currants being rich in pectin. This jam was the most solidly gelled jam I've ever made. It's stiff enough to offer some serious resistance to my spoon and keep its shape as I scoop it out of the jar onto my toast. With a little additional work, this jam would make a fantastic dried preserve like those dried marmalades put up in boxes in Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book, a collection of late 16th-century and early 17th-century English recipes.

I deemed the experiment a success. Currants have a sweet-tart fruit flavor I love, the seeds are small enough and soft enough not to bother me when I left them in the jam, and the color of the jam is bright red and very appealing. If I have the privilege of picking currants again, I'll try mixing the berries with other fruits for new jam combinations.

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Cherries!

The sour cherry tree in our backyard is back in its best form this year, yielding an impressive amount of cherries. There are enough for the squirrels to get some dessert-on-the-branch plus we have as many as we can stand to pit for cooking now or freezing for later.

Here's the crop from the first two days of excellent picking, filling four 32-oz yogurt containers:

Sorry, no pictures of us at the table with a pile of cherries on the table and two cherry pitters. Too much juice squirting all over, didn't want to get any on the camera. Thanks to Andrew's mom, Diane, for warning us that cherry juice will even get on the wall during the pitting process. We're glad we put up that old bedsheet to catch any stray cherry spray.

Some close-up views of the fruit on the tree:

So much more exciting than last year, when there was only one cherry we found that ripened well enough to eat. We've been out to pick about every two days for a week and the bounty hasn't stopped yet. These cherries are very tart to eat plain, but their flavor when cooked and lightly sweetened is dramatically more complex and delicious.

The ongoing list of things we've made with our cherries so far:
cherry puree (kind of like applesauce, but with cherries)
cherry sauce (cherries cooked in light syrup)

honey-sweetened cherry sauce
cherry bread pudding, recipe from Pleyn Delit: Medieval Cookery for Modern Cooks by Butler, Hieatt, Hosington
frozen cherries
cherry bounce (cherries preserved in sugar and whiskey)

 cherry jam

It's been a busy two weeks of cherry harvest.

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Quiet Thanksgiving dinner for two

Thanksgiving Day was not a large celebration this year, just me and my husband. Since we both had the day off work, I slept in and spent the rest of the morning cooking up a special small feast with lots of local items.

Here's our feast table just before we dig in:

The menu

Main dish:
a locally-raised organic chicken, roasted with rosemary sprigs (from my own backyard) stuffed in the cavity

Side dishes:
golden beets from the special Thanksgiving farmer's market, roasted in the pan with the chicken
spaghetti squash from a friend's backyard, roasted and seasoned with salt and pepper, butter and brown sugar
rose heart radishes from the CSA, boiled and then sauced with a roux-based white sauce with chicken bouillon base and lactose-free milk

Dessert:
pumpkin custard in pie form, with prosciutto bits rolled into the crust

To drink:
a California Chardonnay

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Mmm, mystery greens

So many greens in this week's CSA box, by two days later I had forgotten exactly what they are all called. I recognized the kale and napa cabbage right away in the fridge, but what kind of green was I using today when I made a salad for a potluck? Tatsoi? Komatsuna? Some kind of choi?

I told everyone who liked the salad that I think it was komatsuna. For anyone here who is going to try to reproduce this recipe, sorry if it's not komatsuna and you get different results.

Mystery Greens Salad
at least 6 servings

1 large bunch komatsuna (or whatever brassica leaf I was using), about two handfuls
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp lemon juice
pinch chili powder
handful of raisins
handful of roasted salted almonds

Cut greens into thin ribbons with a knife and place in a bowl. Whisk together the oil, lemon juice and chili powder and pour over the greens. Toss to dress, then garnish with raisins and almonds. Can be made a few hours ahead.

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Crisis averted: apple cake

Problem: Potluck is in two hours, I have no idea what to make, and the only food of large quantity in the house is apples.
Solution: Apple coffee cake, chock full of organic Cortland apples sold by Teresa Santiago of Sunny Lane Farm and Teresa's Fruit and Herbs, from her family's apple picking in Wisconsin at an old orchard (hence why it's organic -- no one has sprayed for years because no one has been tending the crop for commercial sale)

Second problem: The recipe I found uses lots of apple, but has a few flaws, starting with having more than a cup of sugar for a little 8x8-inch cake.
Solution: Make up a new recipe, changing everything except fat (maybe I'll change that next time) and leavener.

It occurred to me while creating this recipe for a baked item that my creative efforts in the kitchen usually tend toward cooking instead of baking. It's in cooking where I feel I can be more flexible, whereas I'm not as easily able to tweak a baking recipe and still get a good outcome. However, much as I liked the recipe I started out with for this dish, I knew that if I didn't change some things I'd find this coffee cake sickeningly sweet and sticky. I figured I'd feel bad about eating it instead of something with more fiber.  Also, I didn't have the nuts called for in the recipe for the topping. I had to buck up and believe that l wasn't making a huge mistake and making my friends eat it.

I'm very happy with the results of this experiment, as were the eaters at the potluck lunch to which I took the cake, straight out of the oven. It's moist enough to be great even without the side of coffee, it's at just the right level of sweetness, and I found another use for the almond flour waiting in my fridge for me to pay it some attention. I could probably get away with using less fat in the cake next time, perhaps even substituting some homemade applesauce.


Potluck Pleaser Apple Cake
at least 8 servings

Dry ingredients:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup white whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon

Wet ingredients:
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup softened unsalted butter
1 beaten egg
2 cups finely chopped peeled apples

Topping ingredients:
1/3 cup sugar
2 Tbsp butter
handful of roasted salted almonds, chopped
1/3 cup almond flour (finely ground almonds)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease 8x8-inch baking pan. Mix dry ingredients in one bowl. Use another larger bowl to cream butter and sugar, then add egg. Mix dry ingredients into wet, then fold in apples. Spread batter into baking pan. Rub topping ingredients together until butter is well incorporated. Sprinkle topping over cake batter and bake 35 to 45 minutes until cake is baked through and topping is golden brown.

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My favorite food of late summer: peaches

I assumed I was leaving behind the best stone fruits in the world when I left Alberta, where the amazing orchards of between-the-mountain-ranges British Columbia provided summertime fruit bliss. But here in Central Illinois, our farmer's markets are graced with freestone peaches from southern Illinois, where the trees grow large yellow-orange fuzzy peaches with magenta centers. They look gorgeous, they smell divine when they finish ripening on the countertop, and I can buy them for $8 a half-peck bag (12 to 15 peaches). The farmer who comes up to Saturday's market in Bloomington often gives me an extra peach or two so the bag is overflowing. They are every bit as delicious as the best offerings fresh from the farm stand in B.C.

I get so excited seeing the piles of peach crates in the farmer's truck that I can't get that stupid "Peaches" song from the 90s from the Presidents of the United States of America out of my head.
Millions of peaches, peaches for me
Millions of peaches, peaches for free

Each year for three summers here, I've tried a new recipe or two that I hope will bring out the best in Illinois peaches. Here is the stand-out dessert of peach season 2011.

Peach Cobbler
about 8 servings

Peach sauce:
8 to 10 fresh peaches, peeled, pitted and sliced
2 Tbsp Minute tapioca
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 to 1/2 tsp powdered ginger
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 Tbsp cold butter

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Mix all the above ingredients in an 8-inch by 11.5-inch glass baking pan. Dot with small pieces of butter. Let the mixture sit while you prepare the topping.

Cobbler topping:
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup cold Crisco shortening
3/4 cup milk (or almond/soy/rice milk)
1-2 Tbsp sugar

Combine dry ingredients. Cut in shortening until no lumps are present. Mix in milk to make a thick but wet batter. Add more milk if batter is dry or doughy. Drop batter onto peaches by large tablespoons. Sprinkle batter with sugar. Bake 30 minutes uncovered in 375 degree oven until batter is golden and sauce is bubbly.

Serve warm or cold, with or without cream poured over each serving. I eat this cobbler straight out of the oven as dessert with dinner, then again at breakfast with yogurt and/or granola and one more time after dinner if there is any left.

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Magenta-colored love in a bowl

The simplest summer soup, made with new beets that arrived in our CSA box. Lotsa beets, not much else going on. Andrew and I make certain soups for each other that end up being code for "I love you," such as his curried squash winter stew, because I told him the first time he made it that it made me fall in love with him all over again. If reading that last sentence hasn't made you ill, try making this soup for someone you adore.

Be sure to keep the beet greens. They are edible, too, and they taste just like beets.

Beets, borscht-ish
serves 3-4

About 1 pound beets with greens
chicken stock (or water w/chicken broth powder)
a handful of fresh dill
sour cream (soy sour cream is what I used)
salt and pepper to taste

After washing the beets and their greens, cut off and keep the greens. Then slice the tops and the root ends off the beets and peel. Cut beets into bite-sized chunks and place in a pot. Chop the greens finely and add to the pot. Pour over enough chicken stock to cover the beets and greens and bring to a boil. Turn down the heat and simmer until the greens are softening and the roots are becoming tender. Chop up the dill finely and cook it in the soup until it wilts and the rest of the veggies are done. Season with salt and pepper. Serve with a generous dollop of sour cream as garnish for each bowl.

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Feeding ourselves with weeds

"I've been working hard this week to clear out the pigweed from my garden," my Grandpa Possehl told me last week. "Friends tell me the restaurants in Chicago will charge top dollar to let you eat it, but they use a different name for it. Starts with a P -- purl-something, pers-something, sounds kinda like parsley, but that's not it."

"Purslane?" I asked, thinking of recipes I'd read from the 1500s using that name in the ingredient lists. It appears in spring salad greens recipes, among a long list of garden herbs and members of the allium family. Lettuce is there, too, but it takes a back seat in importance.

"Yeah, that's it. A chef uses the fancy name and will pay a lot for it as a delicacy, but down on the farm we just called it pigweed, and I just pull it out in bunches and throw it out."

I jumped at the chance to taste something I'd only read about before. I wasn't even sure which weed it was until Grandpa described it. Here's a picture taken at the University of Illinois. He gamely volunteered to pull some and send it home with me along with some fresh mixed lettuces from the garden. He chuckled as he put it into a plastic bag and told Grandma, "I'm giving Heather some of that pigweed out of the garden to eat. Heck, if she likes it well enough, I'll give her a whole big garbage bag next time." As I left for home with the bag, both of them grinned conspiratorially as if they'd just gotten away with a practical joke. "Hope you like the pigweed."

My husband and I mixed together the lettuce leaves and the purslane leaves stripped from the vines and ate them with homemade dressing yesterday for dinner and today for lunch. Turns out Andrew's instincts for making salad dressing correspond with 15th Century English tastes. He mixed a dressing of about half white wine vinegar and half olive oil and salt.

The verdict? Grandpa, you should start exporting your pigweed to fancy restaurants. It's delicious! Next time purslane comes up on its own in a part of the yard or the garden box where I could afford to let it grow bigger, I'm keeping it. It is a tender green (comes from being a succulent plant that stores moisture in its leaves to use in dry times), and its tangy flavor is very similar to clover leaves, which I occasionally enjoy eating freshly plucked from the lawn.

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Late-spring soup the Finnish way

Inspired by the recipe for Kesakeitto (Finnish summer vegetable soup) in Scandinavian Cooking by Sonia Maxwell, I made a new recipe with the ingredients available in my CSA box and my refrigerator stash. Most of the veggies that are considered summer vegetables in Finland are already available garden-fresh in the springtime in Illinois.

For those who are able to tolerate dairy products, I'd recommend using real dairy cream or milk for an even better flavor.

Finnish-style Vegetable Soup
4 to 6 servings

6 small radishes with greens
3 carrots
1 handful spinach leaves
1 small head broccoli
2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp flour
1 egg yolk
1 1/2 cups unsweetened almond/soy milk (the traditional Finnish soup uses dairy cream)
2 Tbsp fresh herbs to garnish: dill, parsley or chives (or a mix of two or three of these)

Halve or quarter the radishes. Chop the radish and spinach leaves finely, discarding any tough stems. Cut the carrots into small dice. Cut the broccoli into bite-sized florets. Place radishes, carrots, broccoli into a small pot and cover with water. Cover pot and bring to a boil. Cook very briefly, about 3 minutes. Add radish and spinach leaves and cook 2 minutes. Strain and reserve the cooking water. Set aside cooking water and vegetables. Melt butter in a large pot. Whisk in flour, then slowly whisk in the cooking water from the vegetables and 1 cup of milk/cream and heat just short of boiling. Whisk egg yolk in a bowl with 1/2 cup milk/cream, then add 2/3 cup of the hot soup and whisk. Pour the egg yolk mixture into the soup pot and whisk together. Put the reserved vegetables in the soup pot and reheat. It is important not to heat the soup all the way to a boil, which will curdle the egg yolk. Season with salt and pepper, ladle into serving bowls and garnish with herbs.

Optional vegetable alternatives: new potatoes, peas, small bits of fish or shellfish

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What grows together, goes together: strawberries and rhubarb

All of the rhubarb recipes in my recipe box are from family members and friends who passed along their new ways of serving up this stalk so that it would take us a good long rhubarb season to start running out of ideas.

Grandma's strawberry-rhubarb jam and mom's strawberry-rhubarb bars are old favorites of mine that pair up the sweet tang of spring's fresh strawberries and the assertive tartness of rhubarb. This week, I decided to try out the classic combo in a new application, a revision of my other grandma's recipe for rhubarb sauce. The original sauce, using rhubarb and canned pineapple, is phenomenal on ice cream or mixed into yogurt or oatmeal for breakfast. But I had 2 pounds of strawberries, a very small bunch of rhubarb from the CSA box, and no pineapple.

I was not a good little girl about measuring my sugar as I was adding it, so I leave that amount up to your taste. Start at 1/2 cup and if the sauce is not sweet enough, add 1/4 cup more at a time until it's right.

The new sauce was a hit on ice cream at our anniversary/birthday party last night, with one guest asking for the recipe. If I'm lucky, he'll thank me by dropping off some rhubarb from his back yard.


Strawberry-Rhubarb Sauce
at least 10 servings

1/4 cup instant tapioca
1/2 tsp salt
2.5 cups water
2 pounds strawberries, sliced
1 cup rhubarb
1/2 cup to 1 1/2 cup sugar, to taste

Put all ingredients (start with 1/2 cup of sugar) into a large pot and bring to a boil. Taste for sweetness and add more sugar if needed. Turn down heat and simmer briefly until fruits are slightly softened, stirring often to prevent tapioca from sticking to bottom of pot. Serve when cool. Best after overnight refrigeration.

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Sour-sweet springtime treat

One of the tastes of spring I get very excited about is rhubarb, that crunchy and tart stalk that adds so much vibrancy to desserts. I still fondly recall a spring and summer childhood snack, dipping the end of a cut rhubarb stalk into a cup of sugar and eating it raw like a sugar-tipped celery stalk.

While visiting the Dane County Farmer's Market last weekend on my birthday, I bought a pound and a half of fresh, hot-pink rhubarb stalks to take home. I was dreaming of pie (like the one my grandmother said she made for my grandfather for his birthday, also last weekend), but I recalled that I had a bunch of cake flour left over from Easter and that I had powdered buttermilk in the refrigerator that needed to be used up, so I changed course and went for upside-down cake instead. The cake recipe is mostly taken straight from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything (10th Anniversary ed.), but with modifications to accommodate rhubarb, which was not one of the fruit options he gave, and the fact that I don't own a cake pan of the correct size for his original recipe.

Rhubarb upside-down cake
12 pieces

2 sticks unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cup brown sugar mixed with 1/4 cup granulated sugar
1.5 pounds rhubarb stalks, sliced
additional granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Pour a few tablespoons of butter into a 9 x 13-inch rectangular cake pan. Keep the rest in a bowl for next part of recipe. Sprinkle the sugar mixture over the butter. Scatter rhubarb slices evenly over the sugar. Sprinkle the rhubarb with about 1/4 cup more granulated sugar.

8 Tbsp powdered buttermilk, reconstituted with water
4 eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
4 cups cake flour
scant 2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Whisk together melted butter, buttermilk, eggs and sugar until mixture lightens in color. Butter may turn to small bits instead of staying liquid. In a separate large mixing bowl, combine dry ingredients. Add the egg mixture and whisk until well-incorporated. Spread the batter over the rhubarb in the cake pan, using a spatula to evenly distribute batter. Bake in the center of oven for 50 minutes or until cake is golden and toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. Cool a few minutes in the pan and serve pieces directly from the pan or invert cake onto a serving platter. Cut into 12 pieces.

Readers may wish to add more sugar to the rhubarb-in-the-pan phase if they like the rhubarb sweeter and with less of its original astringent nature than I do.

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CSA fuels my anticipation

Just got the word back from the farmer: we're in as members of the Henry's Farm CSA, sharing a 25-week share with two of our friends. Looking outside at the latest snowfall that is starting to melt and thinking about how much I'm going to enjoy fresh vegetables.

For those of you who may be asking "what's a CSA?" Let me back up a little bit. The acronym stands for Community Supported Agriculture. My analogy is buying stock. The farmer sells shares to generate capital for this season's expenditures for seeds, plants, and equipment. I purchase a share for a set price, and I accept some of the financial risk for the season. In return, I expect to receive a box of vegetables once a week. Hopefully, the farmer has made good choices for what foods to grow for the soil conditions and the caprices of Central Illinois weather. If the harvest is good, my weekly box has monetary value of 1/25 of my share, or I get even more food as "dividends," and the farmer has extra vegetables to sell for profit. If bad, I don't recoup my costs, but I do get some food items every week and the farmer is not going to be insolvent and can farm another year.

As an additional benefit for all of us going into the CSA business together, we have a partnership around local organic farming. Shareholders are invited to visit the farm. Some CSAs, although not this one, require a certain number of hours of farmwork for a lower-priced share. The farm serves as a clearinghouse for recipe ideas. Our particular farmer has an educational focus on his farm website and he is also an author (as is his sister, who has also written a book about the farm).

If it all shakes out as the farmer and I expect it, most weeks will have an abundance of the most successful crops and a smattering of those that are not planted in large amounts or those that don't fare so well this season.

Based on the information provided about last year's seed purchase, I expect that this year I'll have a chance to taste some things I've never eaten before and will have a steady supply of some favorite summer vegetables. Also, I'll have to figure out what folks will trade me for tomatoes, which I don't eat and of which Andrew eventually will have too many.

Happily anticipating the first box at the end of May.

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Playing with garden produce: enchiladas

This week's experimental dish was a way to make a large amount of yellow summer squash flavorful.
The contents:
three medium yellow squashes, peeled (they had tough peels) and chopped
1 to 2 onions, chopped
1 15-oz can black beans
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
about 16 corn tortillas
6 to 8 oz crumbled queso fresco
assorted garden peppers (poblano, jalapeño, banana, bell), chopped
cumin and Penzey's Spices Adobo Seasoning to taste
salt and pepper
22 oz can enchilada sauce (I found a red sauce that was all chiles and no tomatoes at the grocery store -- score!!)


Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Saute the onions and carrots till tender, then add the squash and peppers. When vegetables soften, stir in the spices and beans and cook a until beans are heated through, stirring. Spoon squash filling into corn tortillas, sprinkle some cheese onto filling, roll into cylinders and place seam side down in a baking dish. Pour enchilada sauce over all tortillas, spread it around to cover all. Bake until sauce is bubbling.

Upon tasting, Andrew and I found out that the hot queso fresco squeaks like cheese curds but does not melt and does not have much flavor. I might have preferred quesadilla cheese or monterey jack. This recipe made enough for six people and it keeps well as leftovers. Many thanks to Laura for asking me to look after her garden for a week in exchange for all the produce that ripened during that time.

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