Weekly Dish

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.

That’s about the extent of what I had on hand one day last week when I set about trying to rustle up some sort of afternoon snack to tide me over until dinner.

It had been one of those proverbial days. Starting at about 3 a.m., Josie had decided to have a little party in her crib. She does this occasionally — wakes up happy and talking and usually puts herself back to sleep — and this particular middle-of-the-night affair sounded like it would be no different. But, what began with sweet-sounding coos gradually escalated to all-out screams. Not crying screams, mind you; the child was still gleefully happy. But we live in a very small two-bedroom house, and at 3 in the morning, that kind of volume carries quite an eye-opening kick. I was convinced that I would find at least two or three more babies in the bed with her contributing to the noise level when I walked into her room. Whatever she was so delighted about she was determined to share with her parents, and it took a joint effort of feeding, rocking, and walking around from the two of us to calm her down and get her to go back to sleep, only to be awakened by her again by 5:30. At this point, it was clear she was ready to be up for good.

From there, the day tumbled into the sort of managed chaos that life with an infant sometimes is: it happened to be Wednesday, when David is gone from 10 in the morning until 10 at night; Josie, after her early-morning performance spent the rest of the day in and out of the exhausted fussing that always follows an out-of-the-ordinary night; and I spent the entire day grading one student’s paper. Josie took no naps to speak of, and when I finally put a grade at the end of the essay response I had been composing since 7 that morning, it felt like quite an accomplishment.

By the time the late afternoon rolled around, she and I were both tired and cranky, and, since she had needed more attention than usual, I could barely remember what I’d had to eat and was starving. The prospect of waiting until David returned for dinner seemed unimaginable, but I still needed something to get me through the next few hours until Josie would (hopefully) go to bed.

When it comes to dinner, I am good at planning, mostly because I’ve been in the habit for so long now. As those of you who remember my marker board posts know, I make a meal plan on Saturday mornings after we get home from the Farmer’s Market, we go to the grocery store for whatever else we need, and the marker board on the side of the fridge tells me what to make every night for the rest of the week. Before I had Josie, the rest of our eating just sort of happened; I kept cereal or oatmeal for breakfast, and we’d either have leftovers or grab something on campus for lunch. Snacks weren’t on my radar at all, save a piece of fruit here and there or the occasional bag of potato chips David would sometimes bring home.

Providing all of the nutrients for a whole other being has, predictably, changed my appetite, and if I thought I was hungry when I was pregnant, that was nothing compared to what my body demands now that I am nursing. It’s not that I eat that much more, in terms of quantity, but I certainly have to eat more often, which translates into having more food choices on hand. Some weeks I do better about remembering to think about snacks than others, but we’re in a seasonal fruit lull right now, which is my usual between-meal sustenance when there’s nothing else. I am also, of course, trying to be conscious of the nutritive value of everything I consume; making the most of my calorie intake was obviously important when I was growing Josie inside my body, but now that I can actually watch her little body become healthy and strong, I am even more aware of how significant the food I take in really is. That may sound stressful, but it isn’t something I spend a lot of time worrying about, I just try to make good food decisions.

On the particular day I found that can of beans in my pantry, though, I have to tell you that I think I might have consumed almost anything I had found that was readily available to be eaten. We are not in the habit of buying pre-packaged junk food, and it’s a good thing, because if, somewhere in the depths of my kitchen shelves, I’d stumbled across a box of Hostess cupcakes, I might well have eaten the whole box in one sitting.

Instead, Josie and I marched out the back door, gathered enough basil for a quick batch of pesto, and I made some semblance of this bean dip, tossing a few other ingredients into the food processor in the precious few moments I had between feedings, diaper changes, and entertaining an off-schedule, fussy baby. Perhaps it was the sheer force of my growling stomach, or maybe it was the fact that Josie sat happily in her little green seat outside for a full 30 minutes while I ate and relaxed for the first time all day, or it’s possible that I was so grateful for a stretch of time to actually savor, rather than inhale, my food. Whatever the reason, if you’d asked me at that specific moment, I would have told you this dip was the best snack I’d ever tasted.

Since that day, I’ve made the dip twice more, taking the time to actually measure the quantities and photograph it, and, although, I can’t say that it tasted quite as good as it did on that first day (thankfully, I haven’t had another one of those days!) it’s provided many an afternoon of a healthful, filling snack, smeared on whole wheat crackers, or as a dip for carrots or radishes. We’ve also spread it on our sandwiches and used it as a quesadilla filling. I love the fact that it’s creaminess comes from something healthful and protein-laden, and I can see endless possibilities for what you could use to flavor the white bean base. For now, though, I’m planning to stick with my original impulse, at least until the basil sends out its last fragrant green leaves of the season.

This recipe certainly is not earth-shattering in its inventiveness, and I’m sure it’s not terribly original, but these are days of creative utilitarianism around our house, and in the capacity of healthy, hearty snack food, this is a dip that does its job.

At the end of the day this dip first made its way out of the pantry and into my stomach, Josie went peacefully to sleep, dinner somehow got made, and I eventually got to climb into my bed and close my eyes. And, as a happy surprise, when I laid my head on the pillow and asked myself the question all mothers of small children must ask at the end of harrowing days — “Now, what, exactly did I do today?” — this bean dip came to mind. A small victory, yes, but a tasty one. And just in case one of those days happens along your path in the near future, a victory I gladly pass along.

White Bean Pesto Dip

1 15-ounce can cannelini beans, drained
2 cloves garlic
2 T. prepared basil pesto
1 T. olive oil
Juice of half a lemon
1/2 t. sea salt

Pulse the garlic in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Add everything else and process until well-mixed but still chunky.

Right after Josie was born, friends in our life brought us food. An age-old expression of community, in many cultures, neighboring women gather around a new mother to tend to the household chores — cooking and cleaning while Mom gets to know her new baby. My mother and sister stayed a few days after Josie’s birth, and I was fortunate to have my husband here all the time — he too is on an academic schedule and so was off for the summer. Still, figuring out what to make for dinner was not exactly the first thing on our minds, so after my mom left, meals prepared by other hands were a huge help.

The first week, my Aunt Anne, who lives in Baton Rouge, brought a big pot of chicken and dumplings, which she calls love food. And they were: homey and warm and delicious, they fed us for nearly a week, and I swear, I could feel my body healing as I ate them. The next week, our friend Kathryn rallied the troops from our Sunday School class to provide meals.

When we lived in Jackson, as one of the only childless couples in a Sunday School class for young marrieds, we cooked a lot of food for new parents. I loved doing it: not only do you get to meet a need for someone, but you also get to go and hold a brand new baby. In fact, I often signed up to take food to people I didn’t know very well, and we met some of our best friends that way. What I didn’t know then is how important that service is: when you’re exhausted and physically recovering and emotionally focused on figuring out how to be parents, food cooked by someone else just tastes better. It becomes more than just physical sustenance; to be really cliche, it ministers to your soul.

And, so, when Kathryn showed up with a simple grilled chicken salad right when my body was craving something green and fresh, and Felicia and Ed dropped off a homey casserole just in time to feed us for a whole weekend, and Sarah brought Italian food the day I had been dreaming of the perfect marinara (which hers was), I felt overwhelmed with love — all through the food I put into my body.

It was more than that, of course — all of these people are dear to us, and it is a wonderful thing to hand over your newborn baby to a friend and watch as she holds the baby’s face close to hers to smell that new baby smell or kisses the top of your baby’s still-soft head or touches tiny fingers and tiny toes in awe of the miracle of new life.

In fact, one of our first friends to bring dinner is one we met through her new baby. Our first Sunday at a new church in a new city, nearly 2 years ago, we sat in front of a couple with a tiny little baby girl wrapped in a beautiful blanket. I will never forget that Sunday because as we walked to the front of this strange sanctuary for communion, I found myself standing right beside this woman and her baby. And I couldn’t take my eyes off of that little face — with the light streaming in from the stained glass windows, she looked like an angel. And, so after the service was over, the couple introduced themselves, and we exchanged phone numbers and, since then, Billy and Garland have become some of our dearest friends.

So, when Garland arrived with black bean quesadillas and a huge container of wonderful, fresh salsa, I wanted to cry — it was just our kind of food, which she knew, and it felt like the continuity in a great big circle of community. When their daughter, Wilhelmina, was a newborn and we were just beginning our friendship with them, David and I kept the baby a few times and cooked for them a few times, and tried to make sure they were occasionally getting out of the house without the little one in tow. Walking with them through the first year of Wilhelmina’s life prepared us for parenthood in ways we couldn’t have imagined at the time: we’ve watched them figure out what to feed her as she started on solid food, how to manage discipline and bedtime routines and, most recently, potty training. Since Josie has been here, they have loved us in so many tangible ways — we have their car seat and their infant swing and their batting gym and plastic bins full of Wilhelmina’s adorable clothes.

A couple of weeks ago, on a Sunday when the temperature had nearly reached 100 degrees, our air conditioner went out. Spoiled as we are by modern conveniences, being stuck in a small house with windows that are painted shut and a sweaty 3-month-old felt like a major catastrophe. After a couple of hours as the thermostat inside climbed towards the 90-degree mark, we called Billy to see if Josie and I could come over for a while to cool off. Garland was out of town, so Billy had Wilhelmina by himself, and Garland’s sister and her daughter were also staying at their house. In the midst of all of that, he persuaded us to come and stay until the air conditioner got fixed. He changed the sheets on their bed, set up a portable crib for Josie in their room, and insisted that we make ourselves at home.

That kindness is the sort that, even after you’ve known someone for a long time, still manages to be surprising and remarkable — perhaps because it is so rare in a culture of busyness and self-sufficiency. It is also the sort that gets communicated in the gifts of food. Long after Garland’s satisfying meal, I found myself thinking about it, especially the salsa. I’m sure partly because nursing a baby causes your body to crave good, fresh, real food. But also, I think, I also craved the care that went into making it: the thoughtfulness it took for Garland to know me well enough to know that I would love it.

And, so I’ve recreated it in a myriad of variations, depending on what I have on hand and what I’ve found at the farmer’s market. Each time I do, it tastes better — not as good as I remember hers tasting, but really good still — packed with fresh, clean flavors and a healthy dose of the sweet memory of kindness.

Exactly what friendship — and the food it brings — should taste like.

Peach Salsa

2 ripe peaches, diced
2 avocados, diced
1 bunch cilantro, rough chopped
2 hot peppers (I used hot banana peppers here, but I’ve also used jalapenos), finely chopped (I leave the seeds for spice, but if you’re sensitive to heat, remove them before chopping)
1 small cucumber, finely chopped
1/4 cup finely chopped red onion (about 1/4 of a medium one)
Juice of 1 lime
Sea salt, to taste

Toss together the peaches, avocados, peppers, cucumber, and onion. Squeeze the lime juice over and sprinkle with sea salt. Toss gently to combine. Serve with chips or quesadillas. I imagine it would also be a nice accompaniment to grilled fish or shrimp.

*Ivonne and Lis are hosting the second annual Festa al Fresco; this salsa would be the perfect thing to take to an outdoor gathering. But, I’ll have to warn you, here in Louisiana, a virtual patio party is the only kind I’d be willing to attend: it is still way, way too hot to spend more than the time it takes to get from front door to car outdoors. But, if I were in Toronto…that would be a different story.

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.

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!

I have posted many a recipe on this site that I have labeled “Comfort Food.” Dishes that merit this distinction, for me, need to accomplish two things: the cooking process itself should be slow, patient, comfort-inducing, and the eating experience must create warmth and happiness. These two categories cannot be separated, and my suspicion is that it’s because somehow I can taste the care that goes into comforting dishes. You’ll find that most of my comfort foods involve a good bit of stirring. As I have written here before, stirring is therapeutic in ways no other activity is for me. But also, the stirring process infuses the air with smells that remind me of other days: days shared with people I love, days spent cooking for those I love, days enjoying the simple process of creating a warming, delicious dish of food. This comforting cooking process should fill my house with feelings of calm and peace, and in these busy days especially, friends, I welcome the scents and sounds that bring those feelings.

A lot to ask from a simple dish of food, you say? Well, a body has to eat, but sometimes a soul also needs to cook.

When I saw that Ivonne (a long-lost sister I have only discovered in the last year–we are certain that our families, particularly the women, are kin, at least culinarily speaking) and her cohort, Orchidea, were requesting dishes of comfort, I set my sights on the ugly fall tomatoes at my farmer’s market and a hefty hunk of butter.

The process for this simple, simple sauce is neither complicated nor labor-intensive, but it does take time. I like to make it on a cold, dreary day, when I can curl up on the couch with a blanket and a book in between recipe steps. When it’s finished, David and I can sit down in a house filled with the rich scent of roasting tomatoes, and enjoy the way this velvety sauce coats our noodles and our tongues with a soft blend of tomato and butter.

Fresh tomatoes are my recommendation for the best flavor, but high-quality canned ones will do in a pinch. If you have tomatoes you put up from summer (I freeze batches of roasted ones), those will work too, but my favorite way to make this is to start with fresh tomatoes (I bought these out of a box that read “fall tomato rejects, 3 for $1″), roast them until they fall apart, and then simmer them with the other ingredients for a long, long time.

Angel Hair with Buttery Tomato Sauce

2 - 2 1/2 pounds tomatoes (should yield 2 cups tomato puree)
Olive oil
Coarse salt
Cracked black pepper
1/2 stick (4 T.) butter
1 medium yellow onion, quartered
2 carrots, peeled and cut into 4 pieces
1/2 pound pasta (I like angel hair for this dish)

Preheat the oven to 425. Wash and core the tomatoes, and cut them into large chunks (for medium-sized tomatoes, quarters work fine). Place them in a single layer on a greased baking sheet, close together, and drizzle with olive oil. Toss with your hands to coat the tomato pieces with oil. Sprinkle liberally with salt and cracked pepper. Roast. The time depends on you — I leave them for at least an hour and then check; they should be easily mashed with a fork and beginning to brown where the salt has landed. Remove and let cool. When cool, process in a food processor or blender to make a smooth puree.

In a medium saucepan, melt the butter over medium-low heat. Add the onion and carrot pieces. Cover with tomato puree and simmer (don’t boil!) for about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.

When the sauce is almost done, cook the pasta to desired tenderness. Remove the vegetable pieces with a slotted spoon and serve them on the side. Plate up a mound of pasta with a ladle of sauce and a pat of butter. Eat, and be comforted.

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!

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!

You may not know that because I make way more pasta than I post about. Mostly because I keep dry pasta in the pantry for nights when dinner needs to be thoughtless and fast, throw some noodles on to boil, and top them with whatever strikes. No measuring takes place on those nights, to be sure.

I made this pasta dish several weeks ago in this fashion, and it was so good, I wanted to recreate it both so I could take the time to photograph it and share it with you and so I would remember what I did.

Some people immediately dismiss a pasta recipe if it has heavy cream in it, largely because restaurants have given cream sauces a bad rap. A plate of fettucine alfredo at a place like Olive Garden is probably at least 2 whole servings (maybe more) of pasta, and the noodles are usually swimming in a bath of butter, cream, and cheese, for a grand total of, what, at least 2 days worth of calories and fat grams? Not to mention the bread…

But who wants a bath of cream anyway, when you can add a small amount of cream to coat the noodles and soak into the vegetables, giving the dish the rich flavor you want without all of the fat? Some, yes, but not a week’s worth.

Dusting the artichokes in a bit of flour and seasoned salt and then pan-frying them in olive oil with the garlic deepens their flavor and makes them a little bit crispy on the outside, which I love, but it isn’t necessary. You can also just add them in with the olives and sundried tomatoes. I also added a grilled chicken breast because I had one leftover, but leaving it out won’t compromise the flavors in the least if you want a vegetarian dish.

Good feta cheese and high-quality olives (I like the Greek ones from the deli counter at my grocery) will make a difference, and I like the sudried tomatoes packed in oil for this, rather than rehydrating the dried ones.

Oh, and I love olives, so I use a lot; strongly flavored ones like kalamatas can overwhelm, so if you’re not a huge fan, you may want to reduce the quantity.

The best part? The sauce was ready to toss with the noodles by the time they were finished cooking, AND it tastes fabulous. My kind of meal.

Ziti with Olives, Pan-fried Artichokes, and Sundried Tomatoes

1 pound ziti
2 T. olive oil 1 14 1/2-ounce can artichoke hearts, drained
Flour
Seasoned salt
1 clove garlic, minced
1/3 cup sundried tomatoes, slivered
1/3 cup roughly chopped black olives (I like the Greek ones)
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup lowfat milk
1/3 cup feta cheese, crumbled

Put the pasta on to boil. Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a large, heavy-bottomed skillet over high heat. Drain the artichoke hearts and lay flat on paper towels. Dust with a bit of flour and sprinkle with seasoned salt. When the oil is hot, lay the artichokes in the skillet in a single layer, as many as will fit at once. Press down with a spatula and let them fry undisturbed for a couple of minutes. Flip them over and fry until brown on both sides. Remove that batch (if you need to do two), and repeat with the remaining artichokes. Reduce the heat to medium and add the garlic. Saute the garlic until fragrant and soft, a couple of minutes, then stir in the tomatoes, olives, and fried artichokes. Turn the heat up to medium high and add the cream. It should reduce quickly; add the milk, and stir continuously until the sauce is thickened. Stir in the feta. Drain the noodles and add them to the sauce; toss until the noodles are coated and the vegetables are evenly distributed. Serve immediately. A simple green salad with mint, lemon, and olive oil makes an excellent accompaniment.

Quick and easy is the theme of our weekly menus these days. The problem, of course, with posting a menu board full of quick and easy meals is that most likely, I’m throwing these meals together in a hurry, not thinking about exactly how much of this or that I’m using, and sometimes not even stopping long enough to photograph said meal (gasp!) Which makes the part where I communicate to you how to make fast, easy food rather difficult.

But I’m trying to do better. David’s carbonara was a step in the right direction (of course it helped that I wasn’t actually cooking that meal, so I could document what was happening).

One thing that works for me is to make a large batch of something or the other on Saturday or Sunday and then use it in different ways throughout the week. For instance, last week I made a big batch of ratatouille, a lovely stew of end-of-summer vegetables, using this recipe from the beautiful blog La Tartine Gourmande. One night we had it over spaghetti, topped with freshly grated Parmesan cheese; later on in the week, I spread a thick layer of the ratatouille on top of a pizza crust and finished with slices of fresh mozzarella cheese. Both variations were delicious, and because the ratatouille was already made, each meal came together in a snap. See, it was even still light enough for us to eat outdoors:

And, even better, it’s actually gotten below 80 degrees in the evenings, so being outdoors is bearable; pleasant even. I hope the weather is cooling off where you are too!