Weekly Dish

Although I’ve still not felt much like experimenting with our meals, I am back to a regular menu-making routine. Last week was a healthy dose of cool-weather favorites. These recipes are old stand-bys, ones I turn to again and again when it turns comfort-food season. I hope you all are enjoying the fruits of this season, too, whatever form they take.

Mostly, mine comes in this form:

My mom’s spiced tea is the cure for whatever ails–soar throat, bad day, hurt feelings. I’ve been making it with decaf tea bags, so it’s also replaced my morning coffee routine.

Other fall favorites that are getting me through:

Aunt Jennifer’s White Chili: simple, hearty, satisfying, especially if you take the time to make homemade chicken stock.

Italian Sausage and White Bean Soup: I discovered this soup last winter, and as soon as the temperature dropped a little bit at night this year, I knew I wanted to make it again (and serve it to friends!)

Homemade Applesauce: Oh, yes, I know it has a lot of butter in it, but if I’m eating dessert, this must be better for me than sitting down with a tub of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Right?

I do hope to have some new recipes to share soon…in the meantime, thanks for being patient!

I’ve let most of my basil plants go to seed at this point, but there’s one that I’ve continued to prune for pesto, and it is still hanging on. A few weeks ago, I harvested an enormous bouquet — as much as I could carry — to make what will probably turn out to be the last big batch of pesto to freeze. I do this every year, and even though hot weather usually persists in Louisiana for another month or so afterwards, and the leaves don’t really change colors, this act of saying goodbye to summer helps me to officially mark the changing of the seasons, at least in my head (and my kitchen).

But then, I’m left with all of this very summery pesto. Some of it goes into the freezer, yes, but what to do with the rest of it?

Well, one of the things that inspired my little harvesting fest this year was a meal prepared for us by my dear friend Jessica and her husband Andy. For dinner one night at their house, they served us roasted portabello mushrooms with spinach and leeks, topped with goat cheese and pesto. Intrigued by the combination of summer and fall flavors — bright, clean basil with earthy mushrooms and leeks — I created these transitional quesadillas.

This recipe couldn’t be simpler, once you have the pesto made, and, loaded with vegetables, the dish is good for you too. I can imagine that I’ll be pulling the pesto out of my freezer to whip these up quite often as cooler weather descends on this part of the country.

Summery Fall Quesadillas

1/2 T. butter
1/2 T. olive oil
1 small yellow onion, sliced into half-moons
1/2 pound assorted mushrooms
2 medium-sized leeks, white and green parts, sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups roughly chopped spinach leaves
2 ounces goat cheese
1 T. basil pesto
4 large flour tortillas

Heat the butter and olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onions and cook until nicely browned (this takes me anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the sugar content of the onions). Sprinkle with Kosher salt, and remove the onions to a plate. Drizzle a little more oil into the skillet if you need to and add the leeks, mushrooms, and garlic. Cook these vegetables together over medium heat until tender. Add the spinach and stir until just wilted. Add this mixture to the plate of caramelized onions.

Mix the goat cheese and pesto together. Warm the tortillas slightly (I cover them in paper towels and microwave them for 20 seconds), and spread each one with a light coating of the goat cheese mixture. Top half of each tortilla with 1/4 of the vegetables and fold over.

Heat a pat of butter and a drizzle of oil in the skillet over medium-high. Cook the assembled quesadillas, one at a time, until browned evenly on both sides.

We ate these as a main course, but cut into wedges, I bet they would also make great appetizers.

PS: Thanks so much to everyone for all of your very kind well wishes about our happy news (and for a speedy recovery from nausea). I’m thrilled to report that I have already felt more like cooking (and more like eating), so hopefully, the second trimester will bode well for Weekly Dish. Your comments and encouragement have buoyed my spirits tremendously, so thank you!

The U.S. South, as a geographic region, is often pigeonholed as one monolithic entity, all of us southerners grouped into the same slow-talking, barefoot-going mass. But think through just the culinary traditions, and you’ll see quite a variance from one part of the South to the next. Take the simple idea of barbecue. Now I grew up in Mississippi, only three hours from Memphis (or for the more adventurous, an hour and a half from a joint in the middle of nowhere called Letha’s), so I will tell you that barbecue means ribs, plain and simple. And I like mine dry. But just ask folks from Texas or North Carolina to describe barbecue, and you’ll see. They have definite ideas about what goes in the sauce, and those ideas vary widely. Oh, and they also have very definite ideas that their state’s barbecue is the absolute best.

To be sure, there are traditions that appear consistently across the South, but many regions have distinct specialities that you can’t find in other places. In the hill country of Kentucky, where some of my mom’s family is from, they make these wonderful concoctions called ham biscuits, homemade biscuits slathered with butter and topped with the best ham I’ve ever eaten. In southern Louisiana, of course, Creole and Cajun cooking reigns supreme; jambalaya, etouffee, and gumbo aren’t likely to appear as frequently in other parts of the region.

In Mississippi, I grew up with frequent tutorials in frying–a staple method in most parts of the deep south–and what I would call good southern comfort food. When asked, my brother Jason requests what I think of as the quintessential comfort meal: fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and black-eyed peas with pepper jelly. Oh, and homemade biscuits, which we smear with butter and honey. Southern food, for us, also meant wild game: my dad and brothers all hunt, so baked doves, roasted quail, and dry-fry (fried venison) were also big parts of our meals.

If the blogging event Food Bloggers’ Geography: Southern Style, put on by My Husband Cooks, had fallen at a different time in my life, I would love to have whipped up one of these dishes that so represents the culinary heritage of my southern family. But, alas, I had to go back to the days before the nausea set in to find something appropriate.

In the first few weeks of pregnancy, I felt hungry all the time. Mostly for salty, crunchy things. I ate olives by the handful and although I am usually not a potato chip girl, if they were near, I could eat a whole bag. One Sunday for lunch, after a heavy rain had knocked some of the not-yet-ripe fall tomatoes from the garden on the ground, we fried them up for what is, in Mississippi anyway, the quintessential southern summer sandwich: a BLT. Instead of ripe red tomatoes, I used the fried green ones, whose tartness works well with the bacon. Instead of lettuce, I added our garden arugula, and I loved the peppery flavor against the salty crunch of the bacon and the spicy coating of the tomatoes. If this were a traditional southern BLT, it would have to have homemade mayonnaise on it, but since I’m avoiding raw eggs, that wasn’t an option (and storebought mayonnaise is never, ever an option). Good, crusty bread is also a must: I used ciabatta for this one; sourdough also works.

I’m sorry I don’t have a real southern “recipe” to offer, but if you dig around in the archives, you’re likely to find many a southern dish: the South has, in many ways, defined the kind of cook I am. I’ve fried green tomatoes here before, so in case you want to make BLT’s with stray fall tomatoes, here’s how to do it.

I’m excited to see how other folks interpret “the South”; you can head over to My Husband Cooks and find out on Sunday.

Dear readers, I am sorry for my unexpectedly long absence. I know you are all tired of looking at those bunny cupcakes (as am I). Many real-life circumstances have conspired to keep me away from the kitchen and the computer, but I hope that I will be back to my regular blogging self shortly. In the meantime, I have a few suprises to share with you (at least one of which will partially explain my hiatus).

First, a surprise arrived on my doorstep yesterday! The very thoughtful and kind Mairead, who writes a blog called Fill Up on Bread, packed a box full of goodies from her homeland of Australia for this round of Blogging By Mail, a fabulous event where food bloggers are assigned the glorious task of sending a little slice of their culinary tradition by post to a fellow blogger. Mairead was assigned to me, and I know she thought her package would never arrive (she posted about it’s send-off over a month ago)!

But arrive it did, and how happy it made me. One of the things I particularly liked about this package is that Mairead attempted to represent the various parts of her culinary heritage: for her upbringing in Ireland, she sent the classic Twinings Breakfast Tea; to represent time she spent in India, three boxes of delicious-sounding masala mixes arrived; and then, of course, there’s Australia. Sweets from Down Under included chocolate biscuits called Tim Tams, which have made the perfect companion to an afternoon of Melbourne’s Vittoria coffee, and chocolate bars called Cherry Ripes, an interesting combination of tart cherry, coconut, and dark, rich chocolate.

One of the things I’m most excited about experimenting with is macadamia oil; I’ve never even heard of it, but I bet it makes a fabulous salad dressing. Next are two native Australian condiments: rosella jam and mango mint chutney. I’m thinking that the jam would be lovely on French bread with a slice of white cheddar cheese for breakfast. A Mexican dip mix sounds like the perfect thing to take to a party I have to go to this weekend, and last but not least, an array of fragrant Australian spices, for which I will have to do some research (fun!) to figure out what to do with them.

Mairead, thank you, thank you, for such a thoughtful and exciting array of flavors from around the world; I can’t wait to try them all.

But, it may take me a while to do so, due to my second surprise. You see, one of the reasons I have been away from the kitchen is because in the first trimester of pregnancy, one’s appetite tends to do bizarre things. That’s right, I’m going to have a baby, and so far, the baby has not wanted me to eat anything very interesting. In fact, opening the refrigerator door often sends me running in the other direction. I’ve been lucky to have avoided sickness, but the faint feeling of nausea, especially induced by smells, has been ever-present, so cooking has not been much fun. Nor have I really felt like standing in the kitchen: pregnancy makes you more tired than I could have imagined. My friend Betsy gave the best description I’ve heard so far: she said she felt like she’d been drugged. David has been a trooper–preparing meals and fetching snacks out of the fridge so I don’t have to open it. Everyone says that the second trimester–which is only a couple of weeks away–is much better, so I’m hoping to be back to blogging, and most of all to cooking. I miss it.

I hope this fall finds all of you out there cooking up wonderful things, and I hope to join you soon.

If you’re interested in what other folks have sent and received for Blogging By Mail, check out the running round-up over at Dispensing Happiness.

Can I just say how much I love having access to the opinions and expertise of real people about food?

When my good friend Garland mentioned that she wanted to have a birthday cake for her one-year-old daughter, Wilhelmina, she wondered what such a cake would look like. Because of a history of family allergies, their doctor recommended waiting to give her dairy, wheat, nuts, egg whites, honey, or other potential allergens until at least her second year.

I volunteered to do some research about allergen-free baking, knowing just the cook to turn to. I found a recipe on Karina’s site that looked like it might work, especially since Wilhelmina loves bananas, but I needed to make some substitutions. Karina was on hand with helpful suggestions and answered all of my questions, and I’m happy to report that the cupcakes were a hit! Here’s the birthday girl holding hers:

The cakes were tender and sweet and perfectly banana-flavored, but the icing was a bit trickier. I made the Maple-Orange icing first because I thought it would taste good (and it did!), but it wasn’t thick enough to decorate with. In fact, it was the wrong consistency altogether, and it separated not too long into the party. I also concocted a faux buttercream with shortening instead of butter, and while it didn’t taste as good as the maple icing, it allowed me to make some pink bunnies, inspired by Wilhelmina’s favorite companion: her pink bunny blanket. Were I to make these again and not need the bunny decoration, I’d make a simple powdered sugar glaze with orange juice and maple syrup. Or, if I baked the batter as a cake instead, I’ll bet it a slice drizzled with just maple syrup and topped with sliced banana would hit the spot too.

Banana-Corn Cupcakes

1 1/4 cups wheat-free, gluten-free baking mix (the mix I used was part garbanzo bean flour, part rice flour, part baking powder, and part xanthan gum)
1 cup cornmeal
1/4 t. Kosher salt
3 egg yolks
2/3 cup vegetable or canola oil
1 3/4 cup brown sugar
3 very ripe bananas, mashed
1/2 cup rice milk (orange juice would work here too, I think)
2 t. vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a muffin tin with greased paper or aluminum baking cups.

Mix the baking mix, cornmeal, and salt together in a small bowl. In an electric mixer, beat the egg yolks with the oil and sugar until well-combined. Add the banana until well-incorporated. Add the dry ingredients alternately with the liquid until all is well-distributed. Stir in the vanilla. Divide the batter among the muffins cups (I had enough left to make a cake in a small loaf pan), and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

–Thanks to Karina, the Gluten Free Goddess, for the inspiring recipe and suggestions for modifying it!

Maple-Orange Icing

1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 T. vegetable shortening, or butter
a pinch of salt
1 T. orange juice
1/4 cup maple syrup
On high speed, beat the powdered sugar, shortening, salt, and juice on high. With the mixer running, pour in the maple syrup, until the icing is a spreadable consistency. This icing probably keeps better at room temperature; I refrigerated mine, and it separated. The shortening could have been the culprit there too…

–Adapted from The Joy of Cooking

For the bunnies:

Ice the cupcakes with a thin layer of the maple-orange or other sweet, flavorful icing. You’ll also need a recipe of pink buttercream-like frosting; any thick, pipe-able frosting will do. I put mine in a small zip-top plastic bag, sealed it tightly, and cut a tiny hole in one corner of the bottom of the bag, but if you have the right equipment, you won’t have to improvise. Then, pipe a small swirly circle for the rabbit’s head on each cupcake. For the ears, slice a banana into rounds, and then slice each round into fourths. One fourth makes a good-sized ear. For the eyes, I used dried cranberries cut into tiny specks, grated carrot for the nose, and coconut slivers for the whiskers.

Happy first birthday, Wilhelmina!