Weekly Dish

Broccoli has never been one of my favorite foods. As a matter of fact, I’m not sure I really ate much broccoli until I was in my twenties (unless you count the kind that comes in a casserole dish smothered with cream of mushroom soup and cheese).

In the first six months we were married, David and I lived in a small apartment downtown in the small Mississippi suburb where I grew up. My soon-to-be sister-in-law Hannah lived just a block away, and during those months, we shared many a meal (and many a load of laundry–Hannah was the only one of us with a washer.) She made this broccoli for us one night, and I have not fixed it any other way since. I love the tangy sauce, the crunchy cashews, and the texture of the not-soggy-but-not-too-crisp broccoli. Most of all, though, I love to make it because it reminds me of the delight of being within walking (and meal-sharing) distance of one of my favorite people (she and David’s brother now live far, far away in Pasadena, California).

If you’re noticing a trend with my vegetable preparation, it is true that I need a bit of sauce to make the vegetables go down smoothly. But in my defense, it makes me enjoy eating them, rather than forcing them down because they’re good for me. And if I were really honest, I would tell you that I’ve not done much forcing since I’ve been cooking for myself. So the sauce is getting me to eat more vegetables, and that’s always a good thing. Right?

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Sometimes I simply crave salad. I’m sure it’s my body’s way of telling me I’m not eating enough vegetables, or I’m eating too much other non-vegetable fare. Or maybe I hunger for something bright and crisp and raw in place of the usual warm cooked meal. Whatever the reason, ever since Alanna, who writes A Veggie Venture, posted a lovely watercress salad last week, it has been on my mind.

I had seen watercress, both at the farmer’s market and at my local grocery the week before, so I was excited to have a recipe to try with the peppery little green. Unfortunately, this week, the watercress at the market was missing (or gone by the time I got there) and the two sad little bunches at the grocery were brown and wilted. Alas.

I couldn’t get the combination of sweet, tangy citrus and rich, salty blue cheese out of my head, so I made the salad with spinach instead. Arugula would have been a better substitute for watercress, but we used the last of it from our garden a few weeks ago. And Alanna’s recipe called for clementines, but satsumas were the best I could do (they are both sweet, diminuitive relatives of the orange).

As I was already tinkering with the recipe–albeit reluctantly–I decided while I was at it to add a few chunks of avocado and a slightly different dressing. I’ve never been one to mix up dressings anyway–I usually just drizzle the ingredients right onto the salad. If you want proportions and an exact recipe, you should head over and check out Alanna’s version. What I have to offer is really more of a suggested toss, which turned out to be delicious, although more free form.

To accompany the salad, I topped some French bread with feta cheese, thin slices of tart green apple, and a drizzle of honey, and popped the toasts under the broiler. Minus the honey, this concoction is frequently what I have for lunch, and when Rorie at Milk & Honey posted about a similar snack last week,–plus honey–I decided to sweeten up my recipe with her addition. Yum! The salad was refreshing and healthy, the feta toast a little more decadent, and together, they made for a filling supper. If you need more protein to make a complete meal, I imagine that citrusy grilled chicken would make a great addition to the salad. As vague as it is, here’s my very approximate salad recipe:

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This soup is so simple, but really satisfying too. The sweetness of the squash, enhanced by the cane syrup and basalmic vinegar in the roasting process, provides the main flavor for the soup, but the subtle savory depth of the carrot and onion mellows the sweetness a good bit. I use a sweet onion so that the contrast is not too stark, add a dollop of mascarpone cheese for texture and creaminess, and sprinkle the bowl liberally with fresh nutmeg. Homemade chicken stock provides a richer flavor, but canned broth works too.

This recipe is designed to use up leftover squash, but other roast vegetables would work too, especially in combination. The wonderful thing about soup is that it’s a pretty forgiving medium. You’d rather use celery than carrot? Fine. Don’t have mascarpone cheese? No big deal. Want to add sweet potatoes? Go right ahead! My favorite thing about this soup recipe is that it makes use of what I have and allows me to play with the flavor combinations already at work with a minimum amount of time and effort. To have dinner on the table, the only thing I had to do was chop and saute the carrot and onion, add the rest of the ingredients and let them simmer, and throw together a salad. What’s even better is that the soup could be made early in the day, or even the day before, and then just warmed up later.

You’ll probably be seeing more meals like this one from me in the coming months–starting Tuesday, I have class three nights a week. If dinner’s going to be made, it will have to be done in the daylight hours. Yikes!

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So it’s no secret in my family that I am not a veggie-lover. I was a pretty picky eater as a child, turning my nose up at all sorts of good-for-you vegetables. I am doing better in my grown-up days, but my ventures into cooking veggies have been rather limited. I know what I like, so I stick with that (sweet potatoes, anyone?). But those crazy food bloggers out there have been raving about vegetables in such poetic ways that I think I’ve been entranced.

Whether convinced by Alanna, who cooks a vegetable EVERY DAY, or Stephen, who waxed eloquent about them for nearly the whole month of November, I bought some brussels sprouts at the grocery store on Monday. I already planned to serve roasted squash with the steaks we were having last night, so I thought the addition of some green could hardly hurt. If I ate them, anyway. David was skeptical. Although I don’t have any bad memories of brussels sprouts, he doesn’t like them. Or so he said. So I only bought a few, about a dozen, and decided we’d at least give them a try.

Learning to roast vegetables is one of the things that began to turn around my veggie-hating ways. Ina Garten’s simple, simple method did wonders for my veggie-cooking habits. She says: buy the freshest vegetables, toss them with olive oil and a good bit of Kosher salt and cracked pepper, and roast them at a high heat (400-450) until the outsides are crisp and browned and the insides tender. Most vegetables I enjoy eating these days come in this roasted packaging.

So I found Stephen’s recipe for Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Apples and Onions, modified it a bit based on what I had in the kitchen, and decided the little sprouts could just go into the oven after the squash had been cooking for an hour or so.

To prepare the squash, I roast two at a time, so I can serve some for dinner as a side dish and have enough leftover for soup later on. I also like to pair butternut and acorn squash, instead of using only one. Acorn squash can tend towards the watery side, and butternut squash is usually fleshier, so for a puree, they complement one another nicely. For flavoring, I like to enhance the squash’s sweetness with dark cane syrup. Cane syrup is a little like unsulphured molasses–dark and thick but without the bitter bite to it (and it’s made right here in Louisiana!). Since basalmic vinegar would go in the glaze for the brussels sprouts, I added a drizzle of it to the squash too, and used the syrup in the sprouts’ glaze in place of the brown sugar. These tricks ensure that if my squash accidentally bumps into the brussels sprouts on my plate, all will end well in my mouth. No cacophonous collisions of flavors that don’t play well together.

The steak recipe is one of my Aunt Cindi’s, from the famed Aunt’s Recipe Book. She uses flank steak, but I couldn’t find any at my grocery, so I used what my butcher labels “finger steaks” instead. I think it’s a sirloin cut, sliced into thick, finger-like portions. The cilantro pesto is quick and light and adds a nice bright flavor to the meat without adding significant fat and calories (like a cream sauce does).

See, I’m trying to be healthier? And guess what? We ate it all. And it even tasted good. The brussles sprouts needed the glaze to go down without a fight, but even David said they tasted good. Who knew?

I’ve written up the recipes in order that you have to cook them–the squash needs about an hour and a half in the oven, brussels sprouts about half an hour, and the steak cooks in under 15 minutes.

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Over the holidays, David and I spent about 2 weeks travelling in Mississippi to see family. Part of the fun, for me at least, is to have lots of people in the kitchen. I hope to recount some of those family kitchen adventures for you in the coming weeks, while sharing the family recipes I’ve gathered or shared along the way. One of the favorite snack items among David’s family is salsa I’ve been bringing to Christmas for the past few years. This year, since our travels were so prolonged and our packing space limited, I decided to wait until we got there to make the salsa. To my delight, my niece and nephew, Abigail and Jacob, were excited to help with the process.

At home, I use a food processor, but in my mother-in-law’s kitchen, we improvised with a blender, and it worked just fine. This recipe is one I make over and over and over again, but I don’t measure the spices (usually), so it always comes out a little different. I quantified the spices once, for friends who wanted the recipe, but these amounts are really just guesses. I add and taste and add and taste until it tastes right to me. I had salsa like this one once in Peru, and this recipe here represents my attempt to replicate it. Fresh cilantro, lemon, and garlic are the non-negotiables; I like to serve the salsa with lime-flavored tortilla chips.

Peruvian Salsa

4 cloves garlic
1 bunch fresh cilantro, stems removed
Juice of 1 lemon
1 jalapeno pepper
1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
Kosher salt, start with a teaspoon (I probably end up adding 2 more, but I like things salty)
Ground cumin, about 2 teaspoons

In a food processor, mince the garlic cloves and jalapeno pepper together by pulsing several times. If you like your salsa spicy, add the pepper whole (minus the stem of course), but if you are sensitive to heat, you can remove the seeds for a milder flavor. Then, add the cilantro through the feed tube with the motor running, and process all of the vegetables are very finely minced. Add the lemon juice, salt and cumin, and tomatoes, and pulse a few times to combine. Be careful not to overprocess here, though, or the salsa will be too runny and not chunky enough. Unless, of course, you prefer your salsa juicy; then, process away.

Note: If you don’t have a food processor, you can process everything in the blender with about a tablespoon of the crushed tomatoes. Then, pour the blender-mixture into a bowl with the remaining tomatoes and stir to combine.

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.

This is what my Aunt Prissy had to say about this week’s theme of comfort food: “Cooking is definitely more than just an activity we do to satisfy the need of hunger. It is saying I love you, I’m sorry, Congratulations, you’ll do better next time, I understand.” I couldn’t agree more.

Chicken Pot Pie is a dish I have made often to say exactly those kinds of things; it’s place in the comfort food category has as much to do with the comfort I am giving away by making it as with the comfort I receive from doing so. Whether for a friend who has a new baby, a church pot-luck dinner, new neighbors, or the loss of a loved one, Chicken Pot Pie has been a reliable staple. It’s a safe-enough dish to satisfy even the pickiest of eaters, and kids usually like it too (especially if you cut the carrots into small enough pieces). Also, it goes a long way if you use a whole chicken, and most people I know have only had the frozen kind, so a homemade one is a real treat (sad, I know, but true!).

Different takes on the basic idea of chicken pie abound–Sara Foster and Ina Garten both make a version topped with biscuits, some people use puff pastry, other people use celery or green peas or potatoes or heavy cream. My way is pretty unfussy. When I make it for just us, for dinner, I make this recipe in a black cast-iron skillet, which dirties only one dish if the chicken is cooked already (the dishwasher around here really likes this recipe for that reason alone!) To take somewhere, I double the recipe, cook the filling in my biggest saucepan, and then dump it all in a big casserole. The key to its tasting really, truly homemade, I think, is in the stock, which imparts a richer chicken flavor than plain canned broth (but that works in a pinch too).

I’m going to give you the steps, from stock to finished pie, but I would never do this all in the same day. Usually, when I roast a chicken, I make stock from the carcass and reserve any leftover meat. This pie makes perfect use of both. If you don’t have leftovers from a whole chicken, you can always cook breast meat in water with lemons, garlic, onions, and a carrot, and make a stock that way. However you make your chicken pie, I hope you will serve it to someone who could use a plateful of comfort. In my experience, this does just the trick.

Chicken Skillet Pie

To make stock:

In a roasting pan (I use the same one the chicken was originally roasted in), roast the bones and leftover drippings at 400 degrees for about an hour, until the bones are a deep, dark brown. Scrape everything from the roasting pan into a large stockpot; cover with water. Add a lemon, quartered, an onion, quartered, and a few cloves of garlic. Salt and pepper well. Bring to a boil, and then simmer for a long time (I never time it; I just let it sit all afternoon). Strain the solids and skim off any visible fat. You can keep it refrigerated if you plan to use it soon, or freeze.

To make pie:

1/2 T. butter

1/2 T. olive oil

1 large yellow onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, sliced very thinly

1 cup sliced mushrooms

1 cup diced carrot

1 T. butter

1 T. flour

1 1/2 - 2 cups stock

1 1/2 cups cooked chicken meat, chopped

1 refrigerated pie crust

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. In a large skillet, heat the oil and butter over medium-low. Add the onions and garlic, and cook until they begin to soften, about 4 minutes. Add the mushrooms and carrots and cook, stirring, until all the vegetables are very, very tender, about 20 minutes. Salt and pepper. Scrape the vegetables to the sides of the skillet, leaving the middle of the skillet open. Add the butter and flour, and mash together quickly to form a paste. Once they have combined, then stir into the vegetables to coat. Add the stock a little at a time to thicken, stirring constantly. You don’t want it to be too thick because it will lose some of its liquid in the oven, but you don’t want a runny pie either. The liquid should begin to coat your spoon. Stir in the chicken and remove from the heat. Cut the pie crust into long strips, laying them on top of the pie in a lattice pattern. (Of course, this is optional; I just think it looks pretty!) Bake for about 35-40 minutes, or until the crust is brown and the filling is bubbly. These quantities can easily be adjusted depending on how much chicken you have and how many people you plan to feed. This recipe easily serves 4.

I love to eat risotto. It is creamy and hearty, perfectly satisfying on a cold night. What I love even more, though, is to cook risotto. In some recipes, the method is its own reward, and for me, the methodical stirring-and-adding process of making risotto is thoroughly rewarding. I think it’s because I spend so much of my time researching, writing and reading that my mind is happy for the opportunity to unwind with the motion of my wooden spoon. And that’s exactly what happens–when I have less than an hour to make dinner, this method is one I often turn to because the very act of making it relaxes me, a pretty challenging feat at this point in the semester. Nothing has to be done in a hurry, it’s versatile enough to accommodate a wide variety of flavor combinations, and I’ve never had it turn out badly. It does take concentrated time (you can’t mix everything up and stick it in the oven), and if you don’t like to stir, this isn’t the dish for you. But, in my opinion, the results are well worth the effort.

You can add any number of vegetable combinations to your risotto; for this one, I used an assortment of mushrooms and the arugula growing in my backyard. My method is based on Sara Foster’s Risotto for All Seasons, in Fresh Everyday.

Mushroom-Arugula Risotto

4 cups chicken broth

Olive oil

Butter

2 portabello mushrooms, cut into chunks

1 cup assorted other mushrooms (I used shitake and oyster)

1 cup torn arugula leaves

1 yellow onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 1/2 cups Arborio rice

1/2 cup white wine

2 ounces Fontina cheese

Salt and cracked pepper

Usually, risotto recipes call for the chicken broth to be warm (Foster says to bring it to a simmer in a saucepan), but I forgot to do that last time I made it and it turned out just fine. Omitting this step gets one less dish dirty, and my husband always appreciates that, so I’m cutting out that step (but I feel the need to tell you about it, in case you are a strictly-follow-the-recipe kind of cook). In a very large saucepan or skillet, melt the butter (about a tablespoon) and olive oil (about 2 tablespoons) together over medium heat. Add the mushrooms and cook until tender. Remove the mushrooms with a slotted spoon. Add the onion and garlic to the skillet and cook until translucent and tender, about 5 minutes. Add the rice, and stir constantly until the grains move easily around the skillet and shimmer a little, about 2 minutes. Now you start the stirring-and-adding process. Start with the wine: add it to the rice and stir (slowly and methodically, to maximize the therapeutic aspects!) until most of the liquid is absorbed (the rice will begin to sizzle a little in the pan, signaling that it’s time to add more liquid). Salt and pepper between liquid additions. Next, add the chicken broth, about 1/2 cup at a time, following the same procedure. When you are nearing the end of the chicken stock, the risotto should be creamy and the rice pieces should be tender (not terribly hard to the bite). Stir in the mushrooms and half of the arugula at this point, adding more broth if you need to. You can also put a lid on it and steam it for a few minutes if the rice still doesn’t taste done. Mine always takes right around 20 minutes total (from when I add the first liquid to the last). Last, stir in the cheese. Serve with the remaining arugula on top.

The Aunts’ Recipe Book, a collection of Ellis family recipes I received when I got married, contains dozens of notecards with each of my Mississippi aunts’ handwriting on them. I love to look closely at each card to see what it tells me about its author. Aunt Cindi’s cards are big and bright; they have fun stickers in each corner and the cookbook from which the recipe came. Aunt Prissy’s tend to be very opinionated and a little on the bossy side, but very precise. Aunt Em’s recipes are written on the back of whatever she had handy at the moment; many of the ones in this book are scratched on the back of very old Christmas cards featuring her boys in matching sailor suits (they’re almost all teenagers now!) Aunt Jennifer’s recipes, for the most part, are simple and straightforward, occasionally adorned with a comment about what the recipe means to her and her family.

When I first started cooking, Aunt Jennifer’s recipe for White Chili was approachable, but not so easy that it didn’t feel like “real” cooking. I find her style to be like that: she believes that food doesn’t have to be fussy to be good, and that if more people learned to cook simple, satisfying meals, we’d have many more families sitting down to home-cooked meals, instead of to pizza or McDonald’s.

This chili is a little like a spiced-up chicken soup, heartier because of the beans, and edgier because of the red pepper and cumin. I love to make a pot of this soup on a dreary Saturday or Sunday afternoon and let it sit for a while. As with most chili recipes, the longer the flavors have to mingle, the better it tastes. I always stir in a few extra thoughts of Aunt Jennifer, for whom I was named, who always served my noodles on top of my spaghetti when I was a kid and never told my mom that I asked her to, and with whom I share a love of teaching and good books. As a matter of fact, this soup goes great with a good book for lunch, if you happen to have one on hand.

Aunt Jennifer’s White Chili

1 pound white navy beans (Aunt Jen says canned is ok, so I don’t argue. Just don’t tell Aunt Prissy. I don’t drain them, either)

2 pounds chicken breasts, or 2-3 cups of cooked chicken meat (I used the leftovers from our Thanksgiving roast chicken)

6 cups chicken broth or stock (I used a combination of canned and homemade)

1 T. olive oil

2 med. onions (I like the sweet yellow ones in this dish)

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 t. cumin

1 t. oregano (I used fresh because I have it in my backyard)

1/4 t. ground cloves

1/4 t. cayenne pepper

Salt to taste

If using uncooked chicken, cook it in water on the stove until all the meat turns white and comes apart easily with a fork. In a large pot, cook the onions and garlic in olive oil until very, very soft. Chop the chicken into small pieces; add everything else to the pot. Simmer for at least 30-45 minutes, preferably longer. Just be careful not to let it boil, or you’ll lose liquid. Serve with any or all of the following garnishes: salsa, sour cream, Monterey Jack cheese, tortillas, chopped oregano or cilantro.

P.S. I realize that I am not abiding by the days on the menu, but it’s been one of those weeks already. I promise to post the Chicken Pie and Risotto recipes later in the week!

For the combination Sugar High Friday/Is My Blog Burning? Cookie Swap, I bring you a cookie recipe in keeping with the Week of the Sweet Potato. These Spicy Sweet Potato Cookies with Maple-Orange Glaze are very dense and moist on the inside, almost cake-like, and crispy on the outside. They are a combination of my favorite accoutrements for the sweet potato when it makes its appearance in a dessert dish: orange, maple syrup, and a plethora of spices. I made these for a certain package that should be arriving any day now–I hope they held up in the mail!

What I love about the dough is that it is very flexible; you can drop the cookies by spoonfuls to get a simple cookie-shape (the ones immediately above are an example), or you can roll out the dough and cut your own shapes (like the little snowflakes at the top). The glaze is a simple powdered sugar one, but the fresh orange juice makes it really delicious. Please, if you make these cookies, squeeze the juice right from an orange–it makes a big difference.

SPICY SWEET POTATO COOKIES WITH MAPLE-ORANGE GLAZE

For the cookies:

1 c. brown sugar

2 sticks butter

1 T. maple syrup

1 c. sweet potato, mashed

1/2 t. salt

1/4 t. nutmeg

1/4 t. allspice

1/2 t. cinnamon

2 1/2 c. flour

1 t. grated orange rind (from one orange)

For the glaze:

1 c. powdered sugar plus more to thicken, if necessary

Juice of 1 orange

1 T. butter, softened

1 T. maple syrup

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Cream the butter, sugar, and maple syrup until light and fluffy. Beat in the sweet potato. Mix the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl; add to the potato mixture with the mixer running on low. Mix until just combined. Roll the dough into a ball and either drop by spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet, pressing them flat with the back of your spoon, or refrigerate the dough to roll out later. (It will be sticky, and if you are going to cut shapes from it, you’ll want it to be a little firmer.) Bake each batch of cookies for about 8-10 minutes, or until the outsides are nice and brown and they don’t give too much when you touch them. While they’re baking, mix up the glaze. I just use a fork to combine the ingredients, but if you want a super-smooth glaze, you might like to use your mixer. Beat together the butter and maple syrup. Add the powdered sugar, a little bit at a time, beating continuously, until you have a thick paste. Add the juice from the orange, stirring until the mixture is spreadable or pourable, depending on how you like your glaze. To thicken, just add powdered sugar. If you look at the pictures, I used thicker glaze for the round cookies (more sugar) and a thin, pourable one for the snowflakes. The thick glaze will retain its white color; if it’s thin, it will be translucent. When the cookies are finished baking, remove them from the oven to cool. Let them cool slightly before glazing, or the glaze will melt and run right off. I think these would also be good as sandwich cookies, with an orange cream cheese icing in the middle. I might try that next time. Until then, happy cookie swap!