Weekly Dish

Every Christmas season when David and I decide it’s time to break out the decorations, I plan a festive meal to end our day (or days) of decking the house and tree. This one has been a popular celebration dinner for us: it has been known to appear on an anniversary or Valentine’s table. We don’t eat steak very often, so when we do, I like to make it special.

This recipe developed from one I found in Paula Lambert’s The Cheese Lover’s Cookbook. Hers is for a whole beef tenderloin, so I’ve had to do some tinkering with the proportions to get it to come out right for just the two of us. The cut of meat you use depends on your taste and your pocketbook. Filets would of course be best, but they cut into my grocery budget pretty severely. The butcher at our local grocer cuts these little pieces called finger steaks; they are the best steak for the money that I’ve found here, and the portion is just right for us. The recipe is flexible, though; you can substitute whatever cut tastes good to you, you just might have to adjust the cooking time.

The sauce for these steaks is made from roasted poblano peppers, roasted garlic, and mascarpone cheese. The cheese base gives the sauce the perfect melting consistency; you place a dollop on top of the warm steak, and by the time you get the fork to your mouth, it’s melted into a wonderfully smooth texture. I love the spice medley of the dish also; the chile powder, seasoning salt, and cumin has become a regular combination in much of my cooking.

I served the steak with my favorite sweet potatoes and a simple salad of arugula, shaved Parmesan, lemon juice, and olive oil. The potatoes can cook while you prepare the steaks and sauce, and the salad comes together while the steak is cooking. Not complicated, but it tastes like you spent all day in the kitchen!

(more…)

One semester of my life as a PhD student has officially come to a close, and I could not be happier. Well, I guess if it was my last semester as a PhD student and graduation was in my near future I could, possibly, feel happier. But this semester’s end brings with it the Christmas season, which I dearly love, and the promise of visits with family and friends I have not seen in a while, whom I have missed.

And, of course now I have time to go into my cooking-baking-holiday frenzy with full gusto! No papers to distract me, no students to correspond with, no grading to do. Blissful, undistracted cooking. Here’s what I have planned: tonight, my friends from Missouri, Casey and Christy are coming over for a kind of farewell holiday dinner (we will be going our separate ways for the holiday break), and so before they head all the way up to Missouri and Illinois, where their family lives, I am cooking them a southern feast. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potato pie. The weekend’s food festivities include more people I love: my girlfriends from college, Patty and Lydia, are headed down for a visit. We do have going-out plans, of course, but for their arrival on Friday, I promised to cook a meal, which you will have to wait until Monday to discover!

Before heading to Mississippi, my kitchen will be full and busy and happy, just the way I like it. My favorite part about cooking during this season is that most of the food I cook I’m making to give away or feed to someone I love. I hope to share many of those recipes with you in the coming days.

Today’s recipe comes from Martha Hopkins and Randall Lockridge’s scandalous but delicious cookbook Intercourses, a rice salad that would be the perfect side dish to take to a dinner party, or main course to serve for a light lunch. It is better the second day, so I like to make enough to have on hand for a quick leftovers lunch. It is very flexible too; you can serve it warm, cold, or at room temperature. I liked it best at room temp.

I hope you all are enjoying this holiday season–I’d love to know what you are cooking!

(more…)

Well, faithful readers, the end of the semester is nigh for me–my last essay is due tomorrow afternoon. Until then, I shall have to turn all of my attention on my studies, but I leave you with this quick recipe for BLT pizza. It is a favorite from my old waitressing post in Jackson, the Brick-Oven Cafe, and the red and green I thought appropriate for the season. Plus, I can hardly imagine better study food than pizza. Here’s the recipe:

BLT Pizza

Prepared pizza crust dough or shell

8 slices bacon, cooked

Ranch salad dressing

4 Roma tomatoes, diced

1 cup of chopped green onions

2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

1/2 cup grated Parmesan

Romaine lettuce, arugula, or other greens

Preheat oven to 475. Once crust has been properly prepared, drizzle the surface with Ranch dressing, spreading to coat. You will want a thin layer over the whole crust, so the amount depends on how large your pizza is. Crumble bacon and sprinkle evenly across pizza. Follow with the chopped tomatoes and green onions. Sprinkle cheeses on top last; bake until the crust is golden and the cheese melted, about 10 minutes. To serve, top each slice with shredded lettuce or arugula and drizzle with a tiny bit of dressing.

When we have guests for dinner, I always know in the back of my mind that I should rely on a tried-and-true recipe, something that I am certain will turn out well. Do I ever do that? No, of course not. I usually intend to, but then at the last minute, I decide to try something new.

Those exact circumstances created the inspiration for this Christmas-Stuffed Sirloin, so-named because of the red and green of the filling. I first made this stuffed steak when Jessie and Jerrod were in town, and it turned out to be a great company dish. It’s not so much trouble that you spend all afternoon in the kitchen but elegant enough to feel special. And, it tastes really, really good.

The only part that takes some time and concentration is preparing the meat, but I imagine you could get your butcher to do that part for you (I just wasn’t exactly sure when I bought mine what I planned to do with it!) I served it with Garlic-Roasted Sweet Potatoes and an arugula salad with Sara Foster’s Caesar dressing. Here’s how you make the steak:

Christmas-Stuffed Sirloin

3 lbs. sirloin

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

4 ounces goat cheese

4 T. basil pesto

1 T. olive oil

2 T. sun-dried tomatoes, chopped

2 t. chopped Kalamata olives

Flour

Preheat the broiler. If your steaks are more than 1/8-inch thick, you have two options. Either, you can pound them flat with a heavy-bottomed skillet, or you can butterfly them by slicing through the middle. Mine were especially thick, so I opted for the latter. You need a really sharp knife to make this work; one of mine did not turn out so pretty. Either way, once you get the meat thinned out, then tenderize it by beating it with the small end of a beer or Coke bottle (this is my dad’s technique; I’m sure there are many others). Rub olive oil into the tenderized meat; salt and pepper both sides. For the filling, mix together the pesto, olive oil, tomatoes, and olives until well-combined. Spread evenly over the ugliest side of each steak, and then roll up, longest side to longest side. Dust the outside of the steaks with flour; shake off any excess. Tie with kitchen string. Heat a large oven-proof skillet on high heat with just a touch of olive oil coating the bottom. When the skillet is very hot (a drop of water sizzles at the bottom), add the steak rolls, turning quickly, just to brown on all sides. Add the skillet to the broiler, and cook briefly, about 2-3 minutes per side. Slice to serve. Serves 4.

One of the challenging things about cooking during the holidays is that you’re also trying to do a million other things at the same time: shop, wrap, decorate, plan, attend parties, not to mention whatever other daily activities you have that don’t stop just because the holidays are near. For us, besides the daily what-to-fix-for-dinner dilemma, that busyness also can interfere with one of the things we love to do, which is to have people into our home for meals.

This pie serves two major functions for me: it gives me something quick but yummy to take when we’re invited to dinner and something to make in a hurry when guests are on their way and I haven’t planned dessert. The best things about this recipe are that you almost always have everything to make it in your pantry and you can mix it up in about 10 minutes and pop it into the oven to bake while you’re having dinner.

I got this recipe from my Aunt Cindi, who wrote it on one of those brightly colored index cards in the Aunts’ Recipe Book; she cites Cotton Country as her source. I’m pretty sure it’s the Monroe Junior League version, but I can’t be sure (this is how recipes develop in the South: very organically!). At any rate, I’ve amended the original Fudge Pie recipe to dress it up a bit for the holidays.

Almond Fudge Pie

1 cup sugar

1 stick butter, softened

2 eggs

1/2 cup flour

Dash salt

1/3 cup cocoa

1 1/2 t. almond extract

1/2 cup sliced almonds

1 refrigerated pie crust

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Cook the pie shell for 5 minutes. Reduce the oven’s temperature to 300 degrees. Cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy. Add the eggs and beat until combined thoroughly. Add everything else except the almonds, and beat until the mixture is thick and creamy. Pour into the pie shell; sprinkle almonds on top. Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until the center jiggles only slightly. If you want to be really fancy, you can serve the pie with a dollop of amaretto-spiked whipped cream. It’s also rich and delicious enough to stand on its own, especially with a strong cup of coffee. 

I don’t know what office holiday parties are like in the rest of the world, but here in the southern U.S., they can be pretty dreadful. On NPR right now, as a matter of fact, is one of the annual pieces on office party etiquette. Whatever other social horrors these parties forebode, they can also have a pretty chintzy selection of food (depending on where you work, of course). A familiar item on food tables around here is a block of cream cheese with some sort of chutney or jelly poured on top. Now, usually I would be opposed to something so effortless, so devoid of cooking. But for some reason, whenever I happen to be at one of these parties, I can’t stop spreading the chutney-covered cream cheese on my crackers. It really does taste good, I just couldn’t ever bring my self to dump a solid block of cream cheese from its foil wrapper right onto a pewter tray. It just isn’t me.

To help with this dilemma, my good friend Casey (with whom I used to work, coincidentally) gave me this recipe. As you will see from the ingredient list, the dip is not lacking in cream cheese. But the presentation is much more elegant, and the cheddar and pecan layer at the bottom provides a nice punch to the whole affair. Now, this dip is in no way gourmet cuisine. But, it’s pretty and Christmas-colored, people like it, and you can make it in about 10 minutes without dirtying anything except your food processor and the spring form pan you put it in. I could never complain about a recipe like that.

Here’s how you make it:

Christmas Torte

12 ounces grated cheddar cheese
3/4 cup salted pecans (better if they’re roasted)
1/2 small onion
1/8 t. cayenne pepper
2 8-ounce packages cream cheese, softened
1 10-ounce package frozen spinach, thawed
1/3 cup cranberry chutney (you can use any kind, but I like the cranberry because it makes the middle layer reddish)
1/2 t. Kosher salt

Grease a small spring form pan. Spread the grated cheese in one layer on the bottom. In the food processor, chop the pecans and onions together with the salt and cayenne until chopped finely. The mixture will be a bit pasty. Mix the pecans and onions with the grated cheese on the bottom of the pan; press down to make a kind of crust. Then, in the food processor, mix the chutney and 1 package of the cream cheese until smooth. Spread this mixture on top of the cheese crust. Squeeze all of the liquid out of the spinach, and add it to the food processor, along with the remaining cream cheese. Spread this on top, and refrigerate. To serve, unmold and surround with crackers (I like wheat thins; Casey recommends Ritz). Garnish with dried cranberries and pecans.

I’ve been tagged by Kalyn to tell you all about my ten favorite foods. Although ten is not many, I will do my best. In no particular order, here they are:

#1 Pizza! I love pizza of all kinds, especially homemade.

Here’s one with ham, artichokes, capers, and feta cheese that I made a couple of months ago. Perhaps my love of pizza has to do with the fact that it’s so versatile, or maybe I’m just a sucker for bread products of any kind. At any rate, I do love it so.

#2 Sweet Potatoes Evidenced by my self-proclaimed sweet potato week during Thanksgiving, my love for this tuber is no secret. For one thing, they are my favorite color. For another, they can take so many different forms: sweet, salty, baked, roasted, fried. My mom brought me a big bag of them for Thanksgiving, so there may be more sweet potato recipes on the way…beware!

#3 Mangoes Aaahhh, the mango. The fruit love of my life. I love these all by themselves when they are just ripe, super sweet and spicy, but not mushy. One of my favorite ways to dress them up is by pouring a little coconut milk in the bowl with the slices and letting the flesh soak it up. Yum…summer, hurry up! Why don’t I live in a tropical climate again?

#4 Pad Thai This spicy noodle dish has been one of my favorites ever since I was a waitress at the (sadly now closed) Brick-Oven Cafe in Jackson, Mississippi, a long time ago. As a matter of fact, when my husband proposed to me, Pad Thai from the Brick-Oven is the food he used to get me to say yes. It worked! This one here is my attempt to copy that version I originally learned to love.

#5 Boiled Shrimp One of the traditions in my family is that for your birthday dinner, you get to pick what we eat. I always choose boiled shrimp because my birthday is in June, and boiled shrimp are, to me, the perfect summer food. I love them with cocktail sauce, a simple salad, French bread, and really cold white wine. Have I mentioned already that I’m a summertime girl?

#6 Citrus One of the things I’m learning about my tastes, even as I write this up, is that I love contrast. I love oranges that are sweet and sour at the same time, and I like any dessert with (real) lemon that plays the sour effectively against something sweet (especially using butter, like in really good lemon squares. I need to post a recipe for those soon.) With the exception of garlic, lemons are probably the food item you’re most likely to find in my kitchen if you pop in for a random visit. I rarely am without at least a half of one in my produce drawer.

#7 Oysters I have always loved raw oysters, even as a child, and my dad would often buy them for us to swallow down with Saltine crackers, a squeeze of lemon and salt. Enjoying food in its simplicity doesn’t get any better than that for me.

#8 Cheese Another food I like to eat in its unadulterated simplicity, I can’t think of a cheese I don’t like. When we get the chance and the weather is nice, David and I love to have a picnic with good cheese, bread, and wine. We really are easy people to please.

#9 Peaches My second favorite fruit, one that also appears on my annual birthday dinner at Mom and Dad’s. My mom makes this fabulous dessert with a cream cheese layer, peaches in gelatin, and a pecan crust. When they come in season, I promise to make it and share the recipe. Other than in that dish, though, I love peaches with the tiniest sprinkle of sugar and a spoonful of cream. Simplicity and summer, these seem to be the things I love.

#10 Anything Sweet and Salty Again, contrasts are really what drive my passion for food, but this one is the one that kills me. I don’t snack too often because when I do, I’m not prone to stop until all of the snack food is gone. Here’s why: snacking for me means eating something sweet and then something salty, and the cycle never ends. This is the reason I love this Christmas Cracker candy–it is both all in one. Plus it is super easy to make (10 minutes, start to finish), fun to take to parties (people can never figure out exactly what it is), and makes a lovely gift. If you don’t believe me, you can just ask Chef Kristy. I sent her some for Blogging By Mail

Alright, so now you know what 10 foods I like the most! The 5 people I tag to tell us about their top 10 foods are, in a spirit of community, the last 5 people (not related to me) who left comments on my blog:

1. Chef Kristy, who wrote a lovely post about the package I sent her.

2. Rorie at Milk & Honey, whose blog I recently discovered through the delicious-sounding muffin-ish cookies she made for the Cookie Swap.

3. S’kat at Skat and the Food, who, from the looks of things started her blog around the same time I did, but I’m just now discovering it.

4. Chanit at Mom’s Recipes and More, who writes about very interesting food from Israel. Her blog is also new to me through the Cookie Swap.

5. Heather at Eating for One, who recently sent me a package full of delightful goodies.

Happy Meme-ing, everyone!

And here’s the recipe for the candy pictured at the top, as promised. Just don’t make it when it’s humid or raining; the caramel will be chewy instead of hard.

Christmas Cracker Candy

1 cup brown sugar

2 sticks butter (preferably salted)

Saltine or other soda crackers

1 12-ounce package chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line a cookie sheet with foil and coat with cooking spray. Lay the crackers side by side in a single layer on the foil. In a small saucepan, melt the butter. Add the brown sugar and stir until it’s dissolved. Boil for 3 minutes without stirring. Pour carefully over the crackers, making sure to coat them evenly. Bake at 400 degrees for 5 minutes. Sprinkle chocolate chips on top, and spread to coat as they melt (carefully, so as not to mix with the caramel). Cool to room temperature, and then wrap in wax paper and foil and freeze. I love to eat it really cold, straight out of the freezer, but you can also let it return to room temperature. I make batches of this to freeze, a few at a time, and then give it away for Christmas. Of course, I always make enough to cure my sweet-salty cravings too!

P.S. It’s time to vote for your favorite cookies from the Cookie Swap. Jennifer and Alberto have posted the round-up, and you can vote for your top 3 picks by emailing them at cookieswap@gmail.com. Remember those spicy sweet potato ones with the sticky maple orange glaze…?