Weekly Dish

What to do when torn between two fruits, ripe and ready for the picking the very same Saturday? Have them both, of course! Throw them together with long, tangy strips of citrus zest, a faint sprinkle of fresh nutmeg, and a bit of brown sugar. Bury them beneath a cloud of butter, oats, and sugar, and bake until the aroma of summer seeps into the sunny corners of your kitchen. Serve warm with coffee, and, if you need a spot of cool, a dollop of vanilla ice cream. I’ll take mine straight, thank you–straight from the bush/tree to my oven and then my mouth, adorned only with fresh slices of peach and a couple of raw berries.

Peaches and blueberries: simultaneously ripe for a reason.

Peach Berry Crisp

About 10 ripe peaches, pitted, peeled, and sliced
Zest of 1 orange
Zest of 1 lemon
1 pint fresh blueberries
1/8 t. grated fresh nutmeg (optional)
3/4 cup brown sugar, divided
1 1/2 cups + 2 T. flour
1/4 t. salt
1 cup sugar
1 cup quick-cooking oats
2 sticks butter, cut into small cubes

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cover completely the bottom of a 9×12 pyrex dish with peach slices (10 medium- to small-sized peaches were enough for me). Sprinkle with the citrus zest (I like it in long strips for this dish, but grated works too), 1/4 cup brown sugar, 2 T. of flour, and the grated nutmeg. Add the berries and mix gently together until well-combined (I use my hands.) Make sure that the fruit mixure is in an even layer.

For the topping, you can use a food processor or a stand mixer with a paddle attachment. Stir together 1 1/2 cups flour, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1 cup white sugar, salt, and oats. With the mixer (or processor) running, add the cubes of butter until small, coarse crumbles form. Spread this mixture evenly over the top of the fruit. Bake for about an hour; the filling will bubble at the edges, and the top should be light brown and crisp (thus, the name!).

Adapted from The Barefoot Contessa’s Peach and Raspberry Crisp.

This dessert is my contribution to Sweetnicks‘ ARF/5-a-day Tuesdays: blueberries are packed with anti-oxidants, among other fantastic health benefits (which somehow diminishes the amount of butter in this crisp in my mind…)

This marker board, attached to the side of my fridge with magnets, is the source of much conversation in my kitchen. Friends are always asking about my menu-planning habits, what we eat on a regular basis, if we really stick to it, how this menu will be modified when we have kids (many of my friends with small children often scoff at my salads with goat cheese and spicy Asian food, muttering things about fish sticks and hot dogs).

I’ve always been a girl with a plan, and even if the plans don’t turn out just right (as often they don’t), filling this marker board on Saturdays helps give shape to our weeks through food. It also helps me to know when I’ve planned company-friendly meals (dishes that make more than could feed the two of us) and when we’ll have leftovers for lunch.

Of course, I don’t expect that any of you would want to follow my menu plans exactly, but in case you’re looking for a little marker board inspiration when you sit down to plan your own week’s worth of meals (if you do), I’ll try to post photos of my marker board on Sundays. Hopefully, it will also remind me which recipes I need to post about soon. If you see one that you can’t find on the site, don’t hesitate to let me know, and I’ll move it up the list of things-to-post.

In case you can’t tell, I’ve also always been a girl with a list. Or twenty.

Have a great last week of June, everyone!

Links

Monday: David’s Roast Chicken, The Contessa’s Parmesan Zucchini

Tuesday: Pad Thai with Chicken

Before Hurricane Katrina, the Mississippi Gulf Coast was known for its pallatial beachfront homes. At the end of one particular drive lined with a towering plot of regal old oaks, gracefully wearing their age in their stature and in the silver locks of Spanish moss dripping from their branches, lay a sprawling white bed and breakfast called Green Oaks.

My first job out of college, as the editor of a small, regional magazine, took me to Green Oaks with my friend and co-worker, Lori, many summers ago. For a special issue on the Coast, we stayed for a few days, attending the blessing of the fleet, a tradition that marks the beginning of shrimping season, wandering around the maritime museum, and eating and photographing some fabulous food. The afternoon we first arrived, after we’d made our way up the winding front stairs, the hostess showed us to our room and then on to the front porch, where aging rocking chairs, a lazy yellow cat named Bill Clinton, and a tray of mint juleps and cucumber sandwiches awaited.

Truth be told, I could have spent the next several days in that rocking chair, listening to the ocean and taking in the warm, salty breeze. I recently opened the issue of the magazine that resulted from that trip, and I could almost smell the heavy, sea-tinged air.
Looking through those stories and photographs now was so strange–like reading about somewhere far away–because so much of what we experienced is no longer there.

My favorite meal we ate was the breakfast the hostess of Green Oaks prepared the morning we were leaving: a soupy bed of red pepper cream sauce, a crispy fried green tomato, and a soft, poached egg, topped with a smattering of fresh, lump crabmeat.

For Memorial Day weekend this year, I tried to recreate that memorable Green Oaks breakfast.

The lovely Green Oaks and its surrounding community may have to be rebuilt from the ground up, but the rich culinary heritage of that coastal region remains. The next time you make crab cakes, I urge you to reserve a couple of tablespoons of the crab meat and try this dish. If you close your eyes really tightly and take a deep breath, you might just be able to smell the salty Gulf air. And if not, I promise you’ll be able to taste it.

Eggs Green Oaks

For the fried green tomatoes:
1 cup flour
1/2 cup corn meal
1 T. Tony Chacheres (or other Cajun seasoning)
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
Buttermilk, to soak the tomatoes
3 green tomatoes
1 cup canola oil
Slice the tomatoes into thick rounds. Salt and pepper; soak in the buttermilk while you prepare the batter and the oil. Mix the flour, corn meal, and the seasoning on a plate. Whisk together the milk and eggs. Heat the oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot (and not before! A drop of water should sizzle immediately), dip the tomato slices in the egg-milk mixture and then dredge in the seasoned flour. Fry until golden brown, about 5-7 minutes per side. Drain on paper towels and keep warm.

For the spicy cream sauce:
1/2 cup chopped sweet onion
1 jalapeno pepper, chopped finely
1/4 cup butter
1/4 teaspoon Seasoned Salt
Juice of 1 lemon
2 T. half and half
1/4 cup fresh, lump crab meat
Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium-low. Add the pepper and onion and cook until soft, about 6-8 minutes. Season with the seasoned salt, and add the lemon juice and cream. Cook until all is combined; cover and keep warm. Add the crab meat and stir gently, just before serving. You want it to just be warm.

For the eggs:
1 egg per person
Olive oil
You can poach the eggs if you prefer; I fried them for my husband, who loves them that way. Heat about a half-inch of olive oil in a skillet. Break the egg into the skillet (you can use a cookie cutter if you want it to be a particular shape, as I did; just make sure you grease the sides of the cookie cutter!). Spoon the hot oil on top of the egg as it fries; cook until the white begins to congeal, or until it reaches your desired doneness. To assemble: Spoon some cream sauce onto each plate, reserving the crab meat. Place two slices of fried green tomato in the center and top with an egg. Spoon the rest of the cream sauce over the egg and the tomatoes and scatter the crab meat over the plate. Garnish with paprika if you prefer. Eat immediately.

This recipe was inspired by Jennifer Diaz, former owner of Green Oaks bed and breakfast.

A couple of summers ago, my parents travelled to Napa with some good friends who work for Viking. They got to stay in this fabulous winery, and one night, a chef stopped by to prepare dinner for them and give them a cooking lesson. Ever since that trip, my dad has been making these crab cakes whenever we all get together, and I never get tired of them.

I’m sure every cook who has ever lived near an ocean (and probably many who haven’t) has her own interpretation of this classic preparation of fresh crab. I have modified the original chef’s recipe significantly (which, you might have noticed, is extremely common in my kitchen) based on what I had, what I wanted to spend money on, and what sounded good to me. The original recipe calls for equal parts shrimp, scallops, salmon, and crab, but I opted to prepare them with only crab, and I altered the amounts of almost everything else. I also omitted a called-for red bell pepper because I forgot to buy it at the grocery store (oops!)

Crab cakes are hard to mess up, I think, as long as you keep them simple. In my opinion, fresh crab should be the only thing that you really taste when you put a bite into your mouth; everything else is either for binding purposes or to enhance the crab’s flavor. For that reason, the best crabmeat you can afford to buy will make a huge difference in how your cakes turn out.

Some food is simply meant to be savored, eaten slowly and thoughtfully, each bite given proper attention. Crab cakes, for me, are one of those foods. Once the crisp exterior yields its soft goodness, each bite melts on the tongue, begging to be chewed as slowly as possible. I generally abide by the crab cake’s wishes and take my sweet time with every bite.
When I made these a few weeks ago, we had some friends over, and the only one left to photograph was the one you see above. (I wanted to take a picture of a mound of them on a plate, but I would feel rude about interrupting a dinner party to photograph the food.) They were clearly a hit; none of us said much during the actual eating of the food, and we are all talkative people. Savoring would be an appropriate word to describe our eating experience. My sweet friend Katherine, when we were finished, said it was one of the best meal’s she’d eaten in a long time.

The chef in Napa served the cakes over a bed of guacamole, and while that pairing doesn’t sound natural to me, everyone at our dinner agreed that it worked quite well. The texture and mellow flavor of the avocados pairs nicely with the soft, mild crabmeat, and the kick of the jalapeno brings out the cake’s spiciness.

With a simple salad and some crisp white wine, it made for one of the best meals I’ve eaten in a long time too. Don’t you love when that happens in your own kitchen?

Crab Cakes and Guacamole

For the crab cakes:
1 pound fresh, lump crabmeat
1/4 cup mayonnaise (preferably homemade)
1 egg, beaten
2 green onions, green and white parts, minced
1 t. dry mustard
1/8 t. cayenne pepper
1/4 t. white pepper
1/2 t. Kosher salt
2 cups Panko (Japanese bread crumbs), divided
1 T. olive oil
1 T. butter

Pick through the crabmeat to remove any loose shells; place in a large bowl. Add the mayonnaise, egg, green onions, dry mustard, peppers, and salt, and lightly fold together, being careful not to break up the crabmeat too much. Add 1/2 cup of the bread crumbs and fold into the crabmeat mixture. Refrigerate for at least a half an hour.

Heat the olive oil and butter in a skillet over medium heat. Pour the remaining bread crumbs onto a plate. Form the crab mixture into round patties, and coat with bread crumbs. Fry in the hot oil/butter for about 2-3 minutes per side, or until the coating is crisp and brown. Remove to a plate lined with paper towels to drain any excess oil.

For the guacamole:
2 ripe avocadoes, sliced into chunks
Juice of 1 lemon
1 jalapeno pepper, minced
1 small Roma tomato, small-diced
2 T. minced red onion
2 cloves garlic
1 t. Kosher salt
1/2 t. cracked black pepper

Sprinkle the avocado slices with the juice of half of the lemon and a palmful of Kosher salt. Mix the tomato, red onion, garlic, salt, and pepper in a small bowl. Add the avocado and mash coarsely with a fork. Sprinkle with the remaining lemon juice and combine with the fork.

To serve: Place a mound of guacamole on the center of a plate. Top with 2 crab cakes and a lemon wedge.

Notes: My friend Mica requested a crab cake recipe without mayonnaise. Although I don’t think the mayo in this recipe is detectable–used only to bind the cakes together–does anyone know of another binding agent that would work for mayo-haters? Sorry, Mica, I didn’t remember that this recipe called for your most hated condiment

Muffins are a wonderful lazy morning food, I think. You can throw them together without too much effort or thought, enjoy a nice cup of coffee while they bake, and then leisurely nibble one or two or three as the morning turns to noon, drinking more coffee all the while. And once you’ve made a dozen, then you have a quick on-the-go breakfast for those not-so-lazy mornings that unfortunately have become more the norm around here.

Heavy with carrot, coconut, and chunks of apples, these muffins are packed with more nutrients than most, making them fair game for ARF/5-a-Day Tuesdays over at Sweetnicks. They are dense, moist, and laced with the spicy kick of cinnamon. Grating the carrots takes some time by hand, but a whirl in the food processor will also do the trick. Other than that step, they come together pretty quickly, leaving plenty of time for you to enjoy your morning.

Carrot, Coconut, and Apple Muffins

2 cups flour
1 1/4 cups sugar plus extra for sprinkling
2 t. baking soda
1/2 T. ground cinnamon
1/2 t. salt
2 cups carrots, peeled and grated (about 4 large carrots)
1 apple, small-diced
1/3 cup sweetened flaked coconut
1/2 cup melted butter
1/2 cup vegetable or canola oil
3 large eggs
1 T. vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Grease a muffin tin and set aside.

In a large bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, soda, cinnamon, and salt. Add the grated carrots, diced apples, and the coconut; stir to blend.

In a smaller bowl, whisk together the butter, oil, and eggs. Stir in the vanilla, and then add the wet ingredients to the dry all at once. Fold until just combined.

Spoon the batter evenly among the muffin cups. Sprinkle the tops with sugar, and bake for about 20 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.

Note to faithful readers: Sorry for the sporadic posting; I had such grand illusions about my month-long break from school and how much fabulous food I would make and post about. There has certainly been no shortage of food creation, but I’ve been so busy enjoying sharing it with friends and family that I’ve neglected the documentation part of the process. Now that I’m back in a regular routine–summer school started today–I hope to post more regularly as well.

Another sort of technical note: Alanna brought it to my attention that my RSS feed has been acting up. Apparently, there are two Weekly Dish feeds, pre- and post-Wordpress. If you are a subscriber to the feed and your reader hasn’t updated in quite some time, would you be so kind as to drop a comment and let me know? I’d be oh so grateful.

Two things I have bought every week at the farmer’s market for the past few weeks: corn and shrimp. Both have a delicately sweet flavor that reminds me of summer, so the combination is a natural one in my mind.

Shrimp and corn soup as prepared in restaurants around here is usually either roux-based, dark and heavy, or cream-based, light in flavor but not in substance; both versions are a bit too hearty for this sultry summer heat.

This shrimp and corn soup is light and flavorful, packed with the flavors of the two featured ingredients and not much else, which, for this simple girl, is how soup should be. The broth I made from shrimp stock in my freezer, boiled with the leftover corn cobs, but you can make vegetable stock with the corn and water if you don’t have any shrimp stock on hand or if you’re pressed for time.

This soup is a good dish to make on a lazy summer afternoon–it takes a bit of time, but not much cooking really; most of the time you can spend sipping lemonade and watching the stock simmer. I served it with a green salad and Rosemary Olive Oil bread (Rorie’s recipe, which I altered by reducing the sugar to 1/2 cup and substituting pine nuts for the walnuts–it was fabulous!)

Summer Shrimp and Corn Soup

3 ears corn
1/3 cup milk
2-3 cups shrimp stock (or water)
1 T. olive oil
1/2 large sweet yellow onion
1 clove garlic
2 small new potatoes, small-diced
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 lb. of small to medium shrimp, shelled
Fresh basil leaves, for garnish

Cut the kernels for the corn cobs and set aside.
In a large pot, combine the shrimp stock with the trimmings from the onion and the corn cobs. Simmer for about 45 minutes.

In a small saucepan, cover the corn kernels with the milk and heat over medium until the milk boils; reduce the heat and simmer for about 5 minutes. Set aside.

Heat the olive oil over medium to medium-low heat; add the onion and garlic and cook until translucent but not brown, about 10 minutes. Add the potatoes, season with salt and pepper, then cover with stock. Simmer for about 30 minutes. Adjust seasonings and add the shrimp. Cook the soup for another 5 minutes, or until the shrimp are pink and opaque. Serve topped with chopped fresh basil. Serves 4 as an entree, 6-8 as a starter.