Weekly Dish

I started this blog because I wanted a place to write about what I love, a place to record what happens in my kitchen, and a place to share recipes with friends and family and anyone else who might find them useful. Since Josie, it isn’t just that it’s difficult to take the time to write (which it is). It’s that the whole way I cook has changed with a little person around, and I haven’t figured out how to share that process. It’s not necessarily that I cook different kinds of foods; for the most part, Josie eats what we eat, and is happy to do so. It is more about what actually happens during the cooking, a juggling act which involves very little measuring and a good deal of haste; hungry toddlers are grouchy creatures. What that means is that when it’s over each night, I generally have no idea what happened, much less recipe notes or photographs to show for it. If I tried to give you a peek into our kitchen window, most days you’d have to stand on your tiptoes to see over the piles of vegetables, a trail of plastic bowls and cups “washed” by Josie, and the tangle of books, paper, and markers that follow us from room to room. But amidst the mess, cooking is happening every day, which seems like a tiny miracle all by itself.

Corn and tomatoes are farmer’s market staples for our family during the summer months, as I imagine they are for many of you who try to eat seasonally and locally. Sometimes I find myself staring at yet another heaping pile of shiny red globes or tripping over the bag of yet-to-be-shucked corn in the corner of the kitchen wondering how on earth I will ever find a way to use them creatively. To help solve that existential crisis, I’ve been assembling a collection of recipes: a dozen ears of corn and a box of tomatoes (somewhere between 3 and 5 pounds) come home with us every Saturday, and sometimes one or both ingredients will form the center for a whole week’s worth of meals. So I thought I’d share a bit about what some of those meals look like while I remember. With a little extra prep the night before, these dinners are not terribly fancy, but they are economical, fairly easy to make, and the one, unfailing qualification in my kitchen: delicious enough to enjoy for dinner and lunch the next day.

Day One: usually, I try to cook and use the corn as quickly as possible; the farmer I buy it from has picked it the day before, but once harvested, the sugars start to break down, and the corn starts to lose its flavor. (It’s still good after day 3, but best before that). If I want to make a dinner where the main event is the flavor of the corn, that usually happens on Monday. One such recipe that’s all about sweet, fresh corn is a very simple soup.

This recipe is based on Sara Foster’s Summer White Corn Soup. The genius of the recipe is the broth: while you’re preparing everything else, you put a big pot of water on to boil, add the stripped corn cobs, basil stems, onion trimmings, and a palmful of salt. The boiling water leeches out all of the vegetable’s goodness, so that the finished soup tastes of little else but sweet summer corn. I make twice as much as I need for the soup and reserve it for corn and tomato risotto later in the week.

I serve the soup with crusty bread, rubbed with butter and garlic, and a big salad. For company or a special occasion, I like to top the soup with boiled shrimp.

Sweet Summer Corn Soup
–adapted from Sara Foster, Fresh Everyday

6 ears sweet corn, shucked and stripped from the cobs, cobs reserved
1/2 cup milk
1 T. butter
1 T. olive oil
1 sweet onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 small new potatoes, scrubbed and chopped
4 cups corn broth (see method below)
coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1/2 cup fresh basil leaves, thinly sliced

First, start the broth: in a large stock pot, cover the stripped corn cobs, basil stems, and onion and garlic trimmings with 4 quarts of water. Sprinkle with 2 teaspoons of salt and a couple of grinds of black pepper. Bring to a boil, and then reduce the heat to a simmer. It will reduce quickly, so keep an eye on it; if it reduces by more than half, add more water. You should end up with about 2 quarts of broth.
Meanwhile, put the corn kernels in a small saucepan with the milk. Heat gently over medium heat, just until the milk bubbles and foams. Reduce the heat and simmer for another 5-7 minutes. Set aside to cool.

In a larger saucepan, heat the oil and butter over medium, and add the onion. Cook until very soft and beginning to turn golden, about 15 minutes. Stir in the garlic and cook for another minute or two. Add the chopped potato, 4 cups of broth, and half of the basil. Turn the heat up to medium-high. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and taste. Add more if it needs it. When it begins to boil, turn it down to a simmer and cook for another 20 or 30 minutes, until the potato is soft enough to mash with a fork.

Next, puree half of the corn-milk mixture in a food processor or blender. Stir the puree into the soup, and add the remaining corn and milk. Salt as needed, and serve with the remaining basil leaves sprinkled on top. The leftover corn broth will keep in the fridge for a week or so, and indefinitely in the freezer.

Whew. What a year. How often I’ve wished that I’d found the time to stop in here and tell you more about it, but, as it turns out, this past year swooped in like a mother cat and snatched us up by the backs of our necks, dragging us from one destination to the next without once stopping to ask us if we were ready to move again.

The number one reason for that constant motion, of course, is that we started 2008 with a docile infant, just learning to crawl, and ended it with a toddler who runs full-throttle everywhere she goes, laughing gleefully or shouting, “No, no!” at the top of her lungs, depending upon her mood and whether or not the cat is doing something that displeases her (poor Matilda, our little black kitty who joined our family in the spring; it seems she can do nothing right as far as Josie is concerned.) The presence of a toddler makes our days full and chaotically busy and delightful and maddening all at the same time. And that’s without adding in work and school.

One happy obstacle completed in 2008: I passed my General Exams and am now, officially, a candidate for the Ph.D., a distinction known in the academic world as A.B.D. (all but dissertation). The dissertation is a big, momentous thing looming ahead, but it is only one thing. And since I’m a girl who likes to pour my intellectual concentration wholeheartedly into one, focused job at a time, that feels like a huge relief. For now, our immediate task ahead, is for David to finish his thesis show and graduate (hooray!) with his M.F.A. in May. I can’t wait.

In the midst of all of this, I am, slowly, learning how to be a cook in this still-new parent-teacher-student life, and I hope to occasionally document the ways that this season is changing how dinner gets on the table (as it still manages to do, miraculously). One way is that we always have good eggs in our refrigerator. At our local farmer’s market, eggs are such a hot commodity that if you aren’t there promptly at 8 a.m. when the bell rings signaling the start of business, you’re usually out of luck. It’s one of the only days of the week we’re thankful to have an early riser: Josie gets us there on time, and usually, we come home with eggs.

And it’s a good thing: they have sustained us through many, many a long week. This preparation is one of my favorites for when we have an abundance of Swiss chard in our garden, which, this year has been pretty much all the time, save the hottest months of the summer. You poach the eggs right in the pan with the greens, so it’s a one-dish meal, and except for the cooking of the eggs, it’s a fairly lazy method: the onions can be left alone for a while to carmelize, and then the greens can wilt at their lesiure after that. Chard is laden with nutrients, but the flavor can be a bit astringent; in this dish, the bitterness is all lost beneath the cloak of creamy yolks and buttery onions. It’s a particularly satisfying meal on a cold night, a warming end to a long day. Or year, as the case may be.

Eggs in a Nest
I found this idea in Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, the informational and interesting story of her family’s move to a farm and conversion to locally grown food; you can find more recipes and information on the book’s website. It’s a great read, particularly if you’re interested in how we eat affects the world around us, and one of my favorite parts is that Kingsolver’s college-aged daughter, Camille, contributes recipes and meal plans at the end of each chapter. This recipe is an adaptation of her version.
1 large bunch Swiss chard, or other leafy green
1 large, or 2 small sweet yellow onions, coarsely chopped
1 T. olive oil
1 T. butter
3 cloves garlic
Coarse salt and cracked pepper
6 eggs
1-2 tablespoons heavy cream (optional)

Remove the stems from the chard leaves and wash all very, very well. Wrap the leaves in dishtowels to dry and set aside.

In a large skillet, heat the oil and butter together over medium. Chop the onions and chard stems into pieces roughly the same size, and dump into the skillet. Stir occasionally, but let them cook until the onions are brown and very, very soft, about 20 minutes. In my opinion, the flavor of the dish comes from well-caramelized onions, so don’t skimp on the time here; if you need longer, say because you’re bathing a baby or something, you can always reduce the heat and let them continue to get all golden and yummy. They’re pretty forgiving as long as the heat isn’t high enough to scorch them.

While the onions are cooking, roughly chop the chard leaves; I like to roll them into long skinny cylinders and slice them into thin ribbons, but whatever works for you.
Once the onions turn brown, season with salt and pepper, and add the garlic. Cook for another minute or two and dump in the leaves. Stir to coat with the onion mixture until the leaves are wilted. Turn the heat down to medium-low.
Make six depressions in the greens, each large enough to hold an egg. Carefully break an egg into each depression, making sure to keep the yolks in tact. Spoon a tiny amount of cream over each egg. Cover and cook the eggs for 4-6 minutes, depending on the size of your eggs and how well-done you like your yolks. When done, sprinkle a little coarse salt over all. We like to serve ours with biscuits or hearty whole grain toast.

If anyone is still out there checking in from time to time, I wish you and yours a full and happy 2009. Thank you for bearing with me as life has swept me away from this space for longer and longer periods of time; it means a lot when I hear from one of you to know that a recipe has been useful or that you’re visiting for the first time. I hope you and I both will have many reasons to return this year.

Yes, that’s snow! In southern Louisiana!

Oh, I wish this post had a different title. I’ve been wanting to tell you about Josie’s forays into the world of solid food for some time now. You’ve all been so kind to be interested in her developments and to comment on how much she’s growing and to let me know that it’s okay that I devote a little bit of this space to talking about her and not just food, even though this is, technically, a food blog.

But, well, I really wanted to have some good news for you. I wanted to say how much fun it is to share the wonders of fresh fruits and vegetables with my little one. I wanted to tell you how much she loves to sit in her high chair, how she leans forward to welcome the spoon into her mouth, how she can’t wait for the next new food. Instead, I have only this to show you:

Some days are better than others—she seems to tolerate spinach and carrots better than anything else, and yogurt for breakfast is sometimes okay with her. But, very often, she turns her head from side to side, tightly closes her lips, and refuses. If she’s feeling particularly witty, she’ll perform her newest saliva trick and blow bubbles right as the pureed food meets her mouth for a fantastic fireworks display of vibrant green or orange (as you see in the photos above). We’ve tried it all, it seems: mashed avocado; applesauce, both freshly made and from a jar; carrots, in commercial baby food form and steamed and blended by hand; spinach; bananas; rice; oatmeal; yogurt; yogurt and oatmeal with pureed fruit mixed in; butternut squash; sweet potatoes. She seems to dislike it all equally, with rare exceptions.

She’s eight and a half months old now, and I’m starting to get discouraged. So I come to you, dear readers, to ask: What in the world do I do to convince my child to eat? Will she just eventually accept that food is part of her life? Am I worrying too much? Is her dislike of bland food somehow connected to the way I eat? I tend to like my food on the robustly flavored side, and my taste for seasonings seemed more pronounced when I was pregnant; the more well-seasoned, the better. That has not dissipated since I’ve been breastfeeding, so is it possible she has acquired a taste for more flavor than the average pureed fruit or vegetable has? Should we go straight to table food? Has anyone else encountered this problem, or is this my particular punishment for being a picky eater as a child? (So sorry, Mom!)

At this point, I’m willing to try most anything (well, within reason, of course; the point is to get nutrients into her body and to cultivate her taste for healthy foods, so I’m not willing to give her chocolate pudding or ice cream just so she’ll like it. At least not yet.)

She’s usually such a happy thing, disgruntled only for the expected reasons — hunger, discomfort, fatigue. Oh, and when we try to put a spoon in her mouth. So, if you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them. I want her to look like this when she sees food coming:

While we’re waiting for the happy, food-hungry Josie to emerge, we have needed food to sustain our own appetites, preferably of the hearty, comforting sort. More often than not this time of year, that comes in the shape of a warm bowl of pasta. Because locally grown broccoli is so plentiful right now, we buy it at the market every week, and this little dish has become something of a standby. I particularly like it with whole wheat penne or tiny shells; the toothsome noodles stand up well to the cloak of creamy, ham-infused sauce. Plus, it cooks quickly, so there’s time for, oh, I don’t know, dancing around a baby in her high chair begging her to open up. One day, I’m hoping I will feed her whatever I’m making, straight from the stove, with minimal cajoling, and we’ll have put this whole baby food stage behind us. I can’t say that I blame her all that much; I’d rather have this pasta than plain, pureed broccoli any day of the week. Wouldn’t you?
Oh, well, in the mean time, at least I won’t be starving.

Pasta with Ham, Mushrooms, and Broccoli

The trick to this being a quick recipe is the order of the steps: if you start the water to boil for the broccoli and pasta, by the time the noodles are done, your sauce should be ready too. In terms of flavor, this is a dish that benefits from frequent sprinkles of salt: don’t save the seasoning step until the end, instead, sprinkle a little in every time you add something new to the skillet.
1 head broccoli, chopped up into bite-sized pieces
16 ounces small pasta shells or penne rigate
4 ounces ham, diced (we used leftovers from a honey-baked ham)
1 t. olive oil
1 small yellow onion, diced
1 cup mushrooms, sliced
3 cloves garlic, sliced thinly
1 t. flour
1/2 cup white wine (if you don’t have wine on hand, chicken stock would probably work too)
1/4 cup milk
2 T. heavy cream
Coarse salt, to taste
Parmesan cheese, grated, for serving

Bring a pot of salted water to boil. You’ll use this pot for both the broccoli and the pasta.

Meanwhile, prep your ingredients: chop the ham, broccoli and onions, and slice the mushrooms and garlic.

When the water is boiling, add the broccoli, and blanch for about 3 minutes; it should be crisp-tender and bright green. Drain the broccoli and set it aside, but reserve the cooking water, putting it back in the pot. Let the water return to boiling, and add the pasta. Cook until al dente.
While the broccoli and noodles cook, heat the olive oil in a large, heavy skillet. Add the ham and cook over medium heat until well-browned. Remove the ham with a slotted spoon and set aside.

Add the mushrooms and onions to the skillet and cook over medium-high heat until the onion is beginning to turn golden. Add the garlic slices and stir them in, continuing to cook until all the vegetables are tender. Season well with salt. Rubbing it between your palms, sprinkle the flour evenly over the vegetables, stirring quickly to coat.
Pour in the wine, and cook over medium-high heat for a minute or two, then stir in the milk. Reduce the heat to medium. Season with salt. Keep stirring and cooking until the liquid has reduced by half, about 5-7 minutes. Stir in the reserved ham and broccoli, and finish with the cream. Cook for just a minute more. Serve the sauce over the pasta, and top with plenty of grated cheese.

My dad has always reveled in the curiosity of little ones. As I was growing up, the firstborn, I think he was always terrifying my mom by tossing me higher and higher in the air, spinning me faster and faster as he swung me in circles, coaxing me into trying all manner of new things. Now that I’ve given him his first grandchild, I have a feeling that he will turn his daredevilish attentions on my daughter.

Part of what’s magical about grandchildren, I think, is that the wonder of a baby who’s just learning her world never changes, but now, fearing for her safety is my responsibility. Dad gets to enjoy the unblemished joy of my daughter’s laugh when he places her face to face with her first live puppy without worrying about whether or not she’ll be afraid. If she gets upset, he can just hand her back over. The thrill-seeking of adventure has always been a favorite pastime of my father’s, so having a brand new pair of eyes to delight with his antics provides lots of entertainment when we visit, for both Dad and Josie. She lights up when he comes around the corner, greeting her with his big smile and booming voice. He wears the mantle of grandfatherly delight like he’s been doing this for a long, long time. Of course, my mom might tell you that fearing for our safety was never Dad’s territory; perhaps he’s been a doting grandfather at heart all along.

It is fitting then that it was Dad who first introduced me to raw oysters, what seemed to me at the time as the most adventurous of foods. He convinced me to try lots of different things simply by pretending that I wasn’t grown up enough; if Dad thought it would be daring and precocious for me to try it, I desperately wanted to. Which is perhaps the reason I started drinking coffee with my breakfast before junior high. I wonder what would have happened had he declared broccoli and spinach stuff for more mature eaters only.

But oysters it was, and joining my father in raw oyster consumption became something of a holiday tradition around our house; come December, they always seemed to appear in our kitchen, piled in a slippery mound in a colander, awaiting Dad’s famous cocktail sauce and Saltine crackers. That’s still my favorite way to enjoy them, but when I married David, I joined my culinary adventures to a man who does not share my love of raw mollusks. So over the years, I’ve experimented with different ways to cook them, and this is my most recent favorite. It’s perfect for our combined preferences — the oysters are poached just briefly enough to take the chill off, while retaining the silky texture I so love about raw ones.

Because of my association of oysters with the holidays, I tend to buy them this time of year, particularly when we’re having a meal to celebrate something, whether it’s our first Christmas as parents, or the start of my last semester before I start dissertating (Lord willing).Paired with champagne, this dish made for a deliciously simple celebratory meal a few weeks ago, as we toasted the end of our first semester juggling our roles as parents, teachers, and students. As we discussed what kind of eater our daughter would be, we both hoped that she would fall on the adventurous side, willing to try anything. As long as she spends time in her grandfather’s kitchen, I’d be willing to guess that she’ll be as eager to take culinary risks as I was; perhaps she’ll at least join us in our raw oyster revelry. And if not, there’s always this middle ground, which I like just as well so long as I’m sharing it with someone I love.

Poached Oysters with Bacon, Spinach, and Cream

We like to eat this just the way it comes out of the oven, with a couple of slices of bread to mop up the pan juices, but I can also imagine that it would pair nicely with thin pasta or a bed of mashed potatoes.

4 slices bacon, diced
Half a medium yellow onion, chopped
1/4 cup chopped green onions
2 cloves garlic, minced
4 cups fresh spinach leaves, chopped
1 pint oysters, shucked and drained, liquor reserved
2 T. heavy cream
2 T. reserved oyster liquor
coarse salt, to taste
1/2 cup fresh bread crumbs
1/4 cup Asiago cheese, grated (Parmesan will also work)
zest of 1 lemon
2 T. butter, softened

Preheat the broiler. In a large, lidded oven-proof skillet, cook the bacon until crispy. Remove the bacon pieces from the skillet, reserving a thin layer of the rendered fat (a tablespoon or two). Cook the yellow onion in the bacon fat over medium heat until very soft and golden, around 10 minutes. Add the garlic and green onions and cook for a few minutes more, until the garlic is soft and aromatic.

Add the chopped spinach leaves to the skillet and stir quickly, coating the leaves with the fat and wilting as you move them around the skillet. Add the cream and oyster liquid, stirring to combine, and cook and stir for a few minutes, until some of the liquid has reduced and the spinach is tender. Sprinkle with salt.
Stir in the bacon pieces, and spread the spinach mixture in an even layer in the skillet. Lay the oysters on top of the bed of wilted spinach, nestling them into the liquid, and put the lid on, allowing them to poach for just a couple of minutes, or just until the edges curl up slightly.
Meanwhile, combine the bread crumbs, cheese, lemon zest, and butter.

When the oysters are curling up at the edges, remove the lid, and stir them into the spinach. Spread the crumbs on top and broil briefly, just long enough for the crumbs to crisp and brown, about a minute (but watch carefully). Serve immediately, with crusty bread, if you like.

Did you have black-eyed peas and cabbage for your New Year’s meal? We did — twice, in fact; once, prepared by some friends who invited us over on the actual first, and Thursday too, because I had already bought the fixings for the traditional peas, cabbage, and cornbread.

This might sound strange to those who know me well, as I have never been a lover of either peas or cabbage. I have learned to fix them to my liking, though, mostly because my husband loves them so — the cabbage, I braise with a green apple and red onion, while the peas get a more Tex-Mex treatment: garlic, jalapeno, cumin, and chile powder. Perhaps not as traditional as it could be, but a definite improvement for me and my finicky relationship with both legumes and cruciferous vegetables.

Even if I have learned to like them this way, the whole time I was braising the cabbage and stirring the peas this year, I couldn’t stop thinking about salad. Oh, yes, it was in the twenties outside, frigid for this part of the world, even in January. And I enjoyed my hot meal of cabbage, peas, and cornbread, which we topped with poached eggs, just fine. After it was over, though, I was still thinking about what those ingredients would taste like in salad form, despite the chill in the air.

So salad it was, for dinner last night, a panzanella of sorts, modified with southern ingredients, particularly those considered lucky to eat on the first of the year. The pepper jelly vinaigrette softened the cornbread croutons and jazzed up the cabbage, while the goat cheese melted into the creamy peas in a way I wouldn’t have expected (I’m imagining the peas in dip form, blended with goat cheese…) to make a salad that was surprisingly tasty. In case you have some of these spare parts rumbling around in your fridge, post-New Year’s, here’s a delicious way to use them up. And it just might make you doubly lucky to boot.

New Year’s Cornbread Panzanella with Hot Pepper Jelly Vinaigrette

These proportions will make two dinner-sized salad. If you have a heartier eater on your hands, I think bacon or ham would work well to up the caloric anty; a poached or fried egg would also sit nicely atop this meal.

2 cups cornbread, cut into cubes
Olive oil
1 cup black-eyed peas*, cooked and cooled
1 T. red onion, finely chopped
2 cups green cabbage, sliced into ribbons
1 ounce goat cheese
Hot Pepper Jelly Vinaigrette (recipe follows)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Toss the cornbread cubes with olive oil and toast them in the hot oven for about 20 minutes (or as long as it takes to chop everything else and mix up the dressing).

To assemble: lay the cabbage ribbons in a single layer on two plates. Top each pile of cabbage with cornbread croutons, peas, and red onion. Divide the goat cheese into two equal portions, and crumble it on top of each salad. Drizzle with dressing.

*I used frozen peas that had been cooked in water for about 25 minutes, but I think leftover peas, cooked as you like them, would work too.

Hot Pepper Jelly Vinaigrette

1 clove garlic, minced
3 T. hot pepper jelly
1/4 cup cider vinegar
Squeeze of lemon
1/4 cup olive oil
Salt, to taste

Whisk together the garlic, pepper jelly, vinegar, and lemon. Pour in the oil in a slow steady stream, whisking vigorously until well-incorporated. Salt to your liking.

…just in case I forget. I tend to do that. Forget, I mean, about dinner.

It’s just that I get so wrapped up in the flurry of holiday cooking that sometimes I turn around at 6 pm and glance gleefully over the roasted butternut squash resting on the stove, the sweet potatoes that have just been pureed in the blender, the discs of pie dough awaiting refrigeration, and I realize: we’re going to have to eat take-out for dinner. Again. Which seems absurd, since it seems like I’ve spent the whole day in the kitchen.

So, tonight, and most likely for the rest of the week, we’ll be having this soup. If you happen to have some already-cooked sweet potato on hand, it comes together easily; the only trick is to think about it before 6 pm (unless you typically eat around 9, as we sometimes do), so it will have some time to simmer. If you don’t already have sweet potatoes cooked, you’ll need a bit more time, but since your oven is already set to 350 (you know, for all of those fabulous Thanksgiving baked goods you’re working on), you can throw in the potatoes and garlic at any time, and then, with the chop of an onion, it’s just a matter of assembly.

The soup is good, hearty comfort food, and, as an added bonus, it’s also packed with all sorts of good-for-you nutrients. Which, let’s face it, is even more important this week, as our bodies are gearing up for the holiday of excess. The best part about the soup is that the potatoes and garlic lend their creaminess to the texture, so no cream is actually needed. To cut out even more fat (and to make this a vegetarian soup), you could also omit the bacon and cook the onion in olive oil instead. Or, leave out the stock altogether, and use the potato mixture in enchiladas or burritos.

Or, make an entirely different soup, based on what you have that you could throw into a pot, or make pizza or pasta or a 5-course meal, but, please, whatever you do, don’t forget about dinner. Your body will thank you, come Thursday, for not having spent the week surviving on snatches of cake batter and take-out. At least I know, from painful past experiences, that mine will.

Smoky Sweet Potato Stew

The bacon, chipotle, and maple syrup pack this soup with flavor, so if you don’t have stock on hand, don’t worry, water will probably be just fine. Same goes for the corn — I had it, I liked the crunch it added, but it certainly isn’t essential.

4 smallish sweet potatoes, scrubbed (or 2 cups cooked, mashed potato)
Olive oil
1 head of garlic
4 slices thick-cut bacon, diced
1 medium yellow onion, small-diced
3 T. chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, finely minced (less if you are heat-sensitive)
2 T. maple syrup
1 T. coarse salt plus more to taste
1 can black beans
1/2 cup corn kernels, scraped from the cob or frozen
1 cup beer (preferably something dark)
2 cups stock, chicken or vegetable (or water if you don’t have stock, and more, if you want a thinner soup)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Poke holes in the sweet potatoes, rub them lightly with olive oil, and bake them whole, on a foil-lined baking sheet, for about 2 hours. Set aside to cool.

When the potatoes have 30 minutes left, slice off the top of the garlic head, wrap in foil, drizzle with a little olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Roast for 30 minutes. Set aside to cool with the potatoes.

While the potatoes and garlic are cooling, cook the bacon in a large soup pot. When it’s done, remove with a slotted spoon and set aside. Pour off all but about a tablespoon of the fat, and add the onions. Cook the onions over medium heat, stirring frequently, until well-browned and very soft, about 15-20 minutes.

Turn the heat on the onions up to medium-high and add the syrup and the chipotle peppers in adobo. Stir and cook for a couple of minutes, then pour in the beer. Stir, scraping up any bits from the bottom of the pan, and cook for another 5 minutes, or until the liquid has reduced by half.

Meanwhile, peel the potatoes and squeeze the garlic cloves from the skin. Mash the flesh from the potatoes and garlic together, and add to the pot, stirring to combine. Stir in the black beans and corn and salt well. Add the stock and bring the soup to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, and let it cook for 10-15 minutes (or longer, depending on how hungry you are and how long it took you to remember about dinner). You may need to add more liquid to get the soup the consistency you like; ours was quite thick (and we liked it that way). Season to taste with salt. If you like, serve topped with a dollop of sour cream and a sprinkling of the bacon pieces. Will feed two hungry people for dinner at least 3 times (about 6 main dish servings).

In college, I lived in the dorm all four years with the same group of girls, who, now, ten years later are still my best friends. Our lives have taken different paths over the years, but we gather periodically for weddings, baby showers, and holidays, and we try to take a trip together once a year, although that has proven more difficult than we would like. My friend, Mica, a part of that group of college girlfriends (and the one in the center above), was the first of us to really exhibit any domestic skills. She was always in charge of food for parties, and when four of us lived together in an apartment one summer, Mica was really the only one who knew how to cook.

Mica’s culinary adventures that summer went something like this: after her summer school classes, she would come home and whip up all kinds of things — yellow cake mix cookies, brownies, and a divine key lime pie that I have particularly fond memories of — and then, without ever even sampling what she’d made, she would go work out for a couple of hours, come home, and make dinner, which was sometimes, but not often, just a little healthier than the sweets she left lying around. In retrospect, the three roommates who consumed all of this food — Lydia, Patty, and me — decided that Mica’s plan to stay skinny that summer was twofold: first, exercise all the time and eat very little; second, make the three of us fat so that she appeared even skinnier by comparison. Perhaps this plan was not exactly a consciously thought-out one, but I know of no other way to explain the image I have in my head of Mica in her work-out gear nibbling at a hardly-dressed bowl of iceberg lettuce while the rest of us feasted on fried pork chops, some sort of casserole, mashed potatoes, and whatever there was for dessert (for, there was always, always dessert).

Despite the number of calories consumed, living in an apartment with our own kitchen was a most-welcome change from our college cafeteria, and Mica was one of the first of my peers that I remember appearing comfortable in a kitchen; she and I have shared a love of cooking ever since. So, recently, when she asked if I had a recipe for chicken marsala that I liked, I started thinking about how our lives — and thus, our cooking habits, — have changed since our college days. Mica married a boy named Micah (I know, what are the odds?), moved to a small town, and is expecting their second child in just a few months. She now spends her days selling real estate and chasing after her two-year-old, so she’s as interested in good food that requires minimal effort as I am. With her in mind, I developed this recipe for what may not be the prettiest food I’ve ever made, but it is definitely tasty and easy to put together. And while it is certainly not the caloric equivalent of something as light as, say, undressed iceberg lettuce, for a recipe with a cream-based sauce, it could be much worse. I do hope that my dear friend Mica is eating the food she cooks these days and that she, along with the rest of you busy cooks out there, finds this recipe useful. I have made it for a couple of special occasions — an anniversary dinner or two — but it is also simple enough for a nice weeknight meal as well.

I am not claiming authenticity here; rather, I was interested creating a version of this traditional Italian recipe that would make quick work of what could seem like a labor-intensive or complicated dish. A heavy, oven-proof skillet (preferably cast iron) is the only pot you need, which makes clean-up a little less work as well. I served the chicken and its sauce over grits thickened with a little butter and some grated Romano cheese, but wide noodles, rice, or a mound of risotto would also make a nice bed for this dish. A simple green salad was all we needed for a side; next time, I’ll wilt some spinach with plenty of garlic for a warm green side dish.

Chicken Marsala with Oven-Roasted Shallots and Mushrooms

2 ounces bacon, diced
4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves
2 T. flour
4 large shallots, quartered
1 small red onion, cut into large chunks
8 ounces cremini mushrooms, sliced
2 T. balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup Marsala wine
1/2 cup half and half
2 T. Dijon mustard
Kosher salt

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

In a large, oven-proof skillet, cook the bacon over medium heat until crispy. Remove the bacon pieces and set aside.

While the bacon is cooking, prepare the chicken breasts. First, place the breasts between two pieces of wax paper or plastic wrap and pound with the bottom of a heavy skillet. You’re looking for a uniform thickness for all 4 pieces of chicken. Then, dust the chicken with the flour on both sides and sprinkle with salt. After you’ve removed the bacon, add the chicken pieces to the skillet and cook, over medium-high heat, without disturbing for about 2-3 minutes on each side, or until nicely browned. Remove the chicken to the plate with the bacon.

Add the vegetables to the skillet — mushrooms, onions and shallots — and pour in the vinegar and mustard, stirring to combine. Sprinkle the vegetables with salt. Put the whole skillet into the oven and roast the vegetables for 30 minutes. During this 30 minutes, you can fix the side dishes (or have your husband do it and you feed your baby and put her to bed).

Return the skillet to the stove, and turn the heat to medium-high. Add the chicken breasts and bacon pieces back to the skillet. Pour in the wine, and deglaze the pan: stir, scraping the bottom of the skillet and letting the chicken and vegetables absorb the liquid. When the wine has reduced by half, after a couple of minutes, pour in the cream. Add a bit of salt to taste and stir, until the sauce is thickened and brown and the breasts are cooked all the way through, another couple of minutes. Serve immediately.

I love Sundays. A day of rest is such a fabulous idea, really. Especially in the hubbub of daily chaos that is our current culture, purposeful slowing down is a good, good thing.

Want to know one of the best side benefits of having a baby? You are forced, for a time, to take life slowly. To curb your daily obligations in favor of tending to the basic needs of an infant is to live, for all intents and purposes, in a season of Sundays. If the baby wakes early, you feed her. When she needs to go back to sleep, you crawl into bed and sleep right along with her. If she falls asleep in the hammock on your chest, you close your eyes and drift off for a few minutes too. You don’t stray far from home, venturing out a few places now and again just to stretch your legs and make sure you are still able to interact with the outside world, but for the most part, you curl up in your cozy nest and you hibernate with your young.

Now, of course I realize that not everyone with a newborn would consider the first few months of a baby’s life to be exactly restful. And moms of more than one child, of course, probably never rest with a new baby around. But, as luck would have it, my little one apparently came into the world understanding that her busy parents were in dire need of slower paced days.

What that has meant for our eating habits is that we sometimes dine at seemingly random times, lunch at 3:00 in the afternoon after Josie has gone down for a long nap, dinner occasionally after 9 because that’s when she’s gone to bed for the night, etc. Out the window too are traditional notions of what to eat when: breakfast food, for instance, appears on our table at all hours.

Especially eggs. In the category of quick meals that provide maximum nutritional value for the preparation time involved, eggs rank high on my list. Particularly for those of us who eat meat infrequently (or not at all), eggs provide a highly valuable source of protein, which my body has craved since I’ve been breastfeeding.
Plus, I happen to be married to a man who prepares consistently perfect fried eggs exactly as I like them.

Recently, my friend Jessica and her husband acquired three lovely chickens, named Olive, Kiwi, and Sunny, and they brought us some of their eggs. If you’ve never had fresh eggs, the difference in taste, color, and general consistency from the standard supermarket ones is remarkable, especially when the egg is the center of attention.

For one of our many late nights of breakfast-for-dinner, I put David to work frying the eggs Jessica brought, while I whipped up mushroom duxelles, a fragrant paste of mushrooms, shallots, and a smidgen of cream and sherry. We each laid our contributions atop slices of toasted homemade honey whole wheat bread, sprinkled the whole mess with chives from the garden, and sat down to a rich and earthy dinner put together in less than an hour.

Now, could we spend more time preparing our meals? Of course, and we sometimes do. But we also like the option of eating well with a minimum amount of fuss — not because we’re too busy or too tired. Rather, we are content to enjoy the rest this season of life is affording us, and while there are times that part of that enjoyment means dawdling in the kitchen for hours at a time when Josie is napping, there are just as many times that I would just as soon curl up beside her and listen to her breathe, leaving dinner to be worried about later. Either way, it is still possible to eat healthy and delicious food — which a body needs to rest properly, after all.

Mushroom Duxelles with Fried Eggs on Toast

To prepare the duxelles, I consulted two sources: Julia Child for authenticity and The Joy of Cooking for a slightly updated version. Both have strict instructions for squeezing all of the liquid out of your mushrooms before cooking them, and if you want a true paste, you should not skip this step. I was not so concerned with the consistency, so I pressed as much liquid out of the food-processed mixture as I could (through a mesh sieve), but I didn’t spend too much time squeezing the mushrooms in a towel, as both books suggest.

For the duxelles:

Half a pound (or 2 cups) of mushrooms (I used a mixture of baby portabellos and cremini)
3 T. butter
1 shallot, minced
1 T. sherry (optional, but highly recommended)
2 T. heavy cream
Sea salt, to taste

Mince the mushrooms in a food processor with a steel blade as finely as possible. Dump the mixture into a fine mesh sieve and press out the liquid, being careful not to lose any of the mushroom bits. Meanwhile, heat the butter over medium heat and add the shallots. Saute until translucent but not brown and add mushroom mixture. Cook, stirring, until the mushrooms are brown and fragrant and the skillet is almost dry. Sprinkle with salt. Turn up the heat to medium-high and stir in the sherry. Stir and cook until it evaporates, then add cream and turn the heat down to medium-low. Continue to cook and stir until the mixture has absorbed the cream and is a thick, brown paste. Taste and salt as needed.

For the toast and eggs for two:

Toast 2 thick slices of toast and butter lightly. Lay each slice on a plate. Spread some of the mushroom duxelles on each slice of bread. Fry 4 eggs (or 2, if you only want one per serving), and lay 2 eggs on top of each piece of toast. Top with more mushrooms and sprinkle with fresh chives (or other herb — rosemary or thyme would be nice too) and coarse salt. Serve immediately.

The leftover duxelles can be used any number of ways: filling for a calzone or an omelet, base for a pizza, or spread for foccacia bread. One morning we mixed it in with scrambled eggs and pesto, and that worked too. It will keep in the fridge for a couple of weeks.

Because my daughter’s arrival coincided with the end of the semester (literally—I gave my final exam in the morning and went into labor that evening), I didn’t have much of a chance to wind down as I usually do, throwing myself into the kitchen and cooking furiously, in celebration of the time to do so.

No, instead, I started off my summer break with a newborn, not exactly prime conditions for having huge blocks of time to spend dawdling in the kitchen as I so pleased. But sweet little Josie did enter this world going to bed at a reasonable hour and staying asleep for a good while, which meant that once we got her to sleep, I could prepare dinner undisturbed. Not that I had a lot of energy for dinner, especially in those first few weeks, but I did itch to do something productive besides feed a baby.

So, I turned to the Farmer’s Market for inspiration and set about thinking how to accommodate our new schedule — what could be started early in the day or the night before and finished without too much time and effort after the baby was asleep? Well, salad, for starters.

And, salad worked so well that we have eaten an awful lot of it since Josie’s been in our life. I have a few basic combinations that I tweak here and there depending on what we have lying around. But since I had promised myself I’d try at least one new thing in the kitchen each week, I needed a significant variation on our old green stand-by. Shrimp are abundant and relatively inexpensive at our market this time of year, so we buy them fairly regularly. The little ones we ended up with a few weeks ago were begging to land atop some greens, so I boiled them and marinated them a day ahead of time to make easy work of assembling dinner the next night.

The idea for the marinade comes from Sara Foster, who calls these “Pickled Shrimp” because of the spice combination used to flavor them. Reminiscent of bread and butter pickles, the tangy-sweet marinade doubled as a dressing for our shrimp-topped salad. Next time, I’ll reduce the amount of sugar and marinate some vegetables along with the shrimp for an even quicker and healthier dinner assembly.

Now that I’ve gotten into the cooking groove, if I could only find some time to write about the things I make, then it wouldn’t take me 3 weeks to compose one post. At least I am finally planning our menus again (as you can see below); funny how the little things at this point seem like such big accomplishments!

What does help me to be motivated, I have to say, is all the encouragement from you sweet people who read this blog. It means much to me that after my long silences, some of you still return with heartwarming well wishes for me and my family. Especially for your kind words about Josie, I thank you.

Shrimp Scampi

Steak and cheese sandwiches

(recipe for shrimp after the jump)

(more…)

As I have written here before, I do not winter well. Granted, I do not live in a climate with an especially long or harsh winter, but perhaps the perception of the deep south as a relatively warm place tricks me into thinking that I shouldn’t have to suffer winter at all. Adding to the illusion, cold weather doesn’t really kick in here until after Christmas, so I come up from a brisk, chilly holiday season thinking that spring should soon be on its way.

Only, I’d better get through January and February first. This winter has been especially cold and wet — it rained and stayed below 40 degrees every day for the first three weeks of the spring semester — but I’d braced myself to be prepared. After all, aren’t pregnant women chronically hot? I’m afraid carrying an extra person around with me has not made the wet chill in the air easier to endure as I’d hoped.

Just when I thought I could duck beneath the covers and stay until April, the Japanese magnolia in our front yard burst into purple and white blooms, showering the ground beneath with a welcome carpet of petals quietly announcing that the end must be near. Armed with this tiny bit of hope for warmer weather, I determined to make it through the next few weeks of blustery cold. To get me through and provide sustenance for our growing little family, David and I got into the habit of making soup on Sundays.

A fitting winter Sunday afternoon project, making soup requires leaving the stove on for hours at a time and ends with comfort food to last through the week. If you are just barely surviving winter where you are, I highly recommend this seasonal therapy. For me, it accomplishes several things at once: it warms me as I cook it, it warms me when I eat it, and it provides food for us on the nights when I just want to come home, put on my pajamas, and crawl into bed without standing over the stove. Soup has surely saved us from many a night of take-out (although we’ve had our share of those too). If you’re hankering for a warm bowl of something to tide you over until spring, head over to A Veggie Venture, where Alanna has been collecting soup recipes all month long.

This tortilla soup, adapted from the Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook, is not particularly difficult, although it does require a few preliminary steps before you throw everything into the pot to simmer. The complexly layered flavors reminds me a bit of a hot gazpacho: fresh with garlic and onions, rich with tomatoes and broth, smoky with the heat of the dried chilies. The onions and garlic I used were especially pungent; next time I make it, I might saute half of them to soften their bite just a bit.

A word about the dried chilies: the Lees call for a combination of anchos or mulatos and pasilla or guajilla chilies. I couldn’t find either of the latter two, so I substituted another dried hot variety, chiles de arbol. If you can’t find any dried chilies at all, I would recommend substituting roasted ones (poblanos would work well, I think, combined with a hotter pepper like a habanero or a serrano). Canned chipotles would also add an interesting note of smokiness and heat.

Whatever you do, don’t skip the toppings — they make the soup, in my opinion.

Vegetarian Tortilla Soup
2 cups corn or canola oil
4 whole dried chiles ancho (or other sweet-smoky pepper)
4 whole dried chiles de arbol (or other hot pepper)
10 soft yellow corn tortillas
Ground cumin
Chile powder
Seasoned salt
5 cups vegetable broth (you can substitute chicken broth for a non-veg version)
1 28-ounce can chopped tomatoes, with liquid
1 large yellow onion, diced
6 cloves garlic, chopped,
Kosher salt, to taste
Cracked black pepper, to taste

Toppings:
1/4 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup sour cream
zest and juice of 1 lime
1/4 t. chile powder
1/4 t. seasoned salt
Cilantro, chopped
Avocado, sliced

Heat about an inch of the oil in a soup pot. While the oil heats up, prepare the dried chiles: slit each one down its side, remove the stem and seeds, and cut into large pieces. (Kitchen shears are well-suited for this job). Add the chile pieces to the hot oil in batches, toasting for about a minute per batch. They should be a little soft and fragrant. Remove with tongs to a plate and set aside.

Add the rest of the oil to the pot and heat to about 350 degrees (medium-high on my electric stove). Meanwhile, cut 6 of the tortillas into thin strips; leave the remaining 4 whole. Line a plate with paper towels. Fry the whole tortillas one at a time for about 1 minute per side, or until crisp. Remove to paper towel-lined plate and season immediately with cumin, chile powder, and seasoned salt. Repeat with tortilla strips, which will crisp faster. Discard the oil.

To the pot (I used the same one), add 2 cups of broth, diced onions, chopped garlic, and the canned tomatoes and liquid. Sprinkle with a palmful of Kosher salt. Bring to a boil. Add the toasted chiles. Crumble in the whole tortillas. Simmer (bubbles just below the surface) until the liquid has reduced by about a fourth, about 10-15 minutes. At this point, you’re going to puree the soup in a blender. Here’s what I recommend: pour the hot soup into the blender and let it sit for a few minutes to cool.

Meanwhile, you can prepare the toppings: stir together the buttermilk, sour cream, lime zest and juice, and seasonings. Wash and chop the cilantro and/or green onions. Slice the avocado. Get out some bowls.

When you think the soup is cool enough not to explode your blender, place a dish towel over the top of the blender, and pulse a few times. If it appears to be behaving, puree until smooth. Return the pureed soup to the pot, add the remaining broth, and bring back to a simmer. Serve with a dollop of the lime cream, a handful of cilantro, slices of avocado, and a fistful of tortilla strips. Be warm and think lovely thoughts of a coming spring!

PS: Thanks to all who have sent pregnancy encouragement my way; your thoughts and words of kindness have brightened many a dreary, tired day!