Weekly Dish

My parents might say that I cook this way because I’ve always been one who delights in not following the rules. I attribute it to my adventurous and imaginative spirit (which they would probably say is a nice way of saying I am a non-conformist, a bad word here in the South). Of course, now I’m a grown-up who gets to say, “Rules? What rules?” At least in my kitchen, anyway.

One of the things I love most about experimental cooking is to take flavors and preparation methods from different regions. Quesadillas are a perfect format for experimenting; they are so quick to make, and the crispy tortilla shell can hold just about anything well. For this variety, I chose the classic French flavor combination, pears and blue cheese, and served it with a tangy mango salsa (which didn’t quite make it into the picture).

Before I give you the recipe though, I have to announce the birth of Ren William Partridge, son of Jessie and Jerrod, our good friends from Jackson (Jessie is the one who inspired the idea for this site). Ren was born yesterday around 1:15 (I think that time is close), and he weighed 9 pounds, 12 ounces (!!). Jessie and baby are doing well; I hope to have pictures to post soon.

Here’s how to make the quesadillas (blue for boy!):

Blue Cheese-Pear Quesadillas

2 T. butter

3-4 cloves garlic

1/2 cup green onions, sliced

3 ripe pears (I used Asian ones), sliced thinly

1 T. red wine vinegar

1/4 t. cayenne pepper

1 T. brown sugar

4 large tortillas

8 ounces crumbled blue cheese

2 T. butter

In a large skillet, heat the butter over medium heat. Add the garlic, and sauté until softened. Add the green onions and pears, and cook for about 10 minutes, until the pears are very soft. Add the vinegar, cayenne, and brown sugar, and cook while stirring for another 3-4 minutes. Remove the filling from the skillet, and heat another 2 T. butter over medium-high heat. Arrange one-fourth of the filling and cheese in half of each tortilla, and fold over. Cook until brown and bubbly, about 5-7 minutes per side. Serve with mango salsa.

Mango Salsa

1 ripe mango

1/2 red onion, chopped very finely

1 cup cilantro leaves, chopped

1 jalapeno pepper, chopped

Juice of 1 lime

1 t. Kosher salt

Mix all in a bowl. Can be made ahead and refrigerated. If you have any leftover, it is delicious with lime-flavored tortilla chips.

This is my favorite summer pasta dish. Another Brick-Oven knock-off, this pasta turns up in my kitchen many times over the course of the summer. A couple of weeks ago, the vendor at the Market who sold me these tomatoes told me that would be his last crop until the fall ones came in. In honor of the last summer tomatoes, I decided to fix them in the way I feel best captures their pure flavor. If you can still get your hands on some summer tomatoes, please make this pasta before the season leaves for good. I do wish it would take some of this dreadful humid heat with it when it goes…a breath of fall air would do me some good.

FRESH TOMATOES AND BASIL

1/2 pound angel hair pasta

1 T. butter

2 T. olive oil

6-8 cloves of fresh garlic, sliced thinly

2 pounds fresh, ripe tomatoes chopped

1 cup fresh basil leaves, torn

Kosher salt

Cracked pepper

Parmesan cheese

Cook the pasta until tender and drain. Toss with the butter and set aside. In a medium skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat, until it shimmers. Add the garlic, and cook until it just begins to turn golden, but be careful not to let it burn. Add the tomatoes all at once and coat with the garlicky oil. Salt and pepper well. Lower the heat to medium-low, and cook until the tomatoes’ skins are beginning to shrivel (they should be soft but not mushy). Add half of the basil until just wilted. Pile each plate with a mound of the pasta. Pour the tomatoes on top, making sure to get plenty of the liquid. Top with extra basil leaves and grated Parmesan cheese. Serve with crusty bread (I cook mine right in the skillet after the tomatoes are done; it soaks up the leftover juices and absorbs that garlicky flavor). And, if you are one of those must-have-meat people (or if you cook for one), grilled shrimp or chicken works well in this dish. A quick, easy, and so delicious meal!

The menu for this week proves that I apparently cannot go a week without relying heavily on chicken. I can’t get away from it! In my second-semester writing class for the past 2 years, I have taught an essay called “A Savage Life,” in which Suzanne Winckler vividly describes her ritual participation in chicken-butchering at a friend’s farm. Both times I’ve taught the essay, without fail, on the way to school I’ve ended up behind one of those awful chicken trucks with the cages stacked on top of each other, feathers flying out everywhere. Coincidence? Maybe, except that another professor confessed last year that the same exact thing happens to her. What is the interstate trying to tell us, I wonder?

I don’t know, but it is certainly hard for me to go a week without using this versatile bird in my menu. My apologies for his constant presence. I did, at least, avoid him until Wednesday this week. That’s something, right?

For my first chicken-free meal, I made this portabella mushroom pie. My good friend from Jackson, Angela Simpkins, makes a pie similar to this one; I think of her each time I make it. I did not make my own pie crust this time (Aunt Prissy, don’t be mad!), but if you have time, you should. The caramelized onions with their sweet richness and tangy feta cheese complement the earthiness of the mushrooms nicely. I have, in the past, added the tomatoes without cooking them first, but then, they make the pie too juicy and the crust soggy. Roasting them first in the oven intensifies their flavor, and eliminates much of their water content. I served the pie with an arugula salad, finished with long, thin slices of parmesan, cracked black pepper, and olive oil.

PORTABELLA PIE

2 pie crusts

2 onions (1 red, 1 yellow) sliced thinly

1 T. butter

1 T. olive oil

3-4 medium tomatoes, chopped

4 portabella mushrooms, chopped

More olive oil

Kosher salt

Cracked pepper

4 ounces feta cheese

1/2 cup chopped fresh basil

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Place one of the crusts in a pie dish, poke holes in it with a fork, and cook for about 10 minutes, until beginning to brown. In a large skillet, heat the butter and olive oil. Cook the onions over medium-high for about 20 minutes, or until they begin to release their sugars and brown. At that point, salt well, and turn off the heat. Meanwhile, toss the tomatoes with olive oil on a cookie sheet (the pieces should be evenly coated), salt and pepper well. Place the mushroom pieces on a separate cookie sheet, and coat them with oil, salt, and pepper also. Roast the tomatoes and mushrooms in a 425-oven for about 12 minutes, or until they begin to shrivel (see photo below). Layer the vegetables in the pie crust, beginning with the mushrooms and ending with the onions; sprinkle the cheese and some basil between each layer. Top with the remaining pie crust, and bake until the top is just beginning to brown, about 10-15 more minutes.

Apparently, the Brick-Oven (although the Brick-Oven in Jackson has closed, I understand that there’s a similar restaurant in Greenville, SC, called Trio. If I’m ever in Greenville, I’ll eat there.) has been on my mind this week. This pasta dish is one I also learned to make from the chefs there. On the menu, the entree was called Penne with Goat Cheese and Pine Nuts, but customers always ordered it with angel hair instead, minus the pine nuts, and usually with shrimp or chicken. So my order, when it went to the kitchen, would be called Chicken Goat or Shrimp Goat, which always sounded hilarious to me. I do like to make it with angel hair; the fine noodles are easily coated with the pesto-goat cheese mixture. I think the Brick-Oven recipe also called for spinach, but I always forget that; you can add some to your skillet if you have it.

Just to give you an idea of how many people there are now in the fair city of Baton Rouge, when I went to Calandro’s last week to get my groceries, I got the LAST package of angel hair pasta in the whole store! Traffic is horrendous too, but I try to only travel within my neighborhood. People seem to be in good spirits about it all (some people, anyway); I saw a bumper sticker last week that said: “Traffic is congested, but we’re glad you’re here.” Anyhow, if you have pesto on hand, this is a quick and easy pasta dish, and subject to many variations. Here’s the gist of it:

1 pound angel hair pasta

4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

1/2 red onion, thinly sliced

1/2 yellow onion, thinly sliced

1 carton sliced mushrooms (about 2 cups)

1/2 cup chopped Kalamata olives

1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes

Olive oil

Pesto

4 ounces goat cheese

Grilled chicken or shrimp (optional)

Cook the pasta until tender but firm, drain, and toss with some olive oil. Set aside. In a large skillet, cook the garlic and onions over medium heat until the garlic is soft. Add the mushrooms. Continue to cook until the onions begin to brown, about 15 minutes. Add the olives and sun-dried tomatoes (and shrimp or chicken, if you’re adding) and cook another minute or two. Place a nest of oiled noodles on plates and ladle vegetable mixture on top. Finish with a teaspoon-ful of pesto and a handful of crumbled goat cheese. Drizzle once more with olive oil and season with Kosher salt and cracked black pepper. Serves 4-6, depending on how much pasta you can eat in one sitting.

Oh, and just in case you’re keeping up, David killed another one of my plants this week. He took my three-year-old aloe plant out for some sun (the one that’s always been inside), and didn’t bring it back in until most of it’s plump leaves were fried. I must say, though, that I am painting quite a one-sided picture of his gardening abilities; the lovely basil I used to make my pesto would surely be dead by now without his attention, and we have some fun lettuces already poking their heads out in our backyard. He does seem to have it out for plants I’ve been caring for, so maybe I should just leave all the gardening to him! Oh, and one more thing: yesterday, he bought me some more rosemary. Just so you know.

Soup and salad is such a traditional combination–cold and hot, liquid and solid–that I like to continue the contrasts with flavors. This corn soup from Sara Foster’s Fresh Everyday is divine, especially with sweet, fresh summer corn. I followed the recipe exactly, so I won’t reproduce it here (if you don’t have that cookbook, you really should buy it anyway), but I paired it with a salad full of contrasts. I love to mix a sweet fruit with a sharp cheese on top of a salad and then top it with a sweet-and-sour dressing. In this case, the Asian pears serve as the sweet and their classic partner, blue cheese, as the sharp. If you don’t like blue cheese, feta works well too. To fulfill my husband’s starch needs, I also cooked some hash browns, which we really like better at night than in the morning.

Pear and Blue Cheese Salad

Salad greens of your choice (I used Romaine because that’s what I had)

2 pears, diced

4 ounces blue cheese

Walnuts, chopped coarsely (I also like to toast them in the oven)

Sherry vinegar (about 1 Tablespoon per salad)

Olive oil

Kosher salt

Cracked pepper

Arrange the greens on a plate, top with the pears, cheese, and nuts. Drizzle equal parts vinegar, olive oil, and honey over each salad, and season with salt and pepper. Makes 2 servings.

Easy Hash Browns

Yukon gold potatoes (they really do make the best hash)

Yellow onions

Butter and olive oil

Salt and pepper

Dice the potatoes and onions really small. Heat the butter and oil in a skillet over medium; add the potatoes and onions. Cook in a single layer for a good 5 minutes or so to allow the bits of potato and onion to begin to brown; stir and repeat. These make a terrible mess in the skillet, but they taste so good. There are no magic proportions; if you like lots of onion, chop lots of onion. If you prefer a more potato-ey flavor, chop less onion. I usually dice as many potatoes and onions as I have on hand and save the raw leftovers for hash browns on another occasion (like with my hamburgers on Friday). The key is not to get your skillet too full; otherwise the vegetables will steam instead of sauté, which will not give you the crisp brown texture you want in hash browns.

Tomorrow, I will resume the menu to the left, but for now, I thought I’d share what we cooked on the grill the day our power went out. After a week of watching the harrowing coverage of the tragedy in my two home states, it seems trivial¾to say the least¾to contemplate my own inconvenience of a few day without electricity. Nevertheless, many people found themselves resorting to the grill until their refrigerators and stoves were back in action, so I thought I’d offer this recipe for what we cooked the night we lost our power.

My heart goes out to those who have lost so much, and I can only pray that the recovery efforts will help them begin to put their lives back together. In the meantime, I hope you and your family and loved ones are out of harm’s way. May all of us who have survived count our blessings and remember to reach out to those in need.

The original recipe for this antipasto, which my Aunt Prissy shared with me, comes from Angela Rhemann, a long-time friend of our family who occasionally teaches cooking classes at The Everyday Gourmet in Jackson, Mississippi. If I followed her recipe, I would bake the antipasto in the oven and serve it with crostini, which I am certain makes a divine appetizer. However, I wanted it to serve as a main dish, so I cooked it in a skillet on the grill, and then stuffed it in some grilled portabella mushroom caps and topped it with slices of fresh mozzarella.

Antipasto-stuffed Portabella Mushrooms

1 red bell pepper

1 14-oz. can artichoke hearts, chopped finely

4 cloves garlic, sliced thinly

4 oz. mixed Mediterranean olives, chopped

¼ cup olive oil

¼ cup capers

4 oz. fresh mozzarella cheese

4 large portabella mushroom caps

French bread

Over a medium flame, grill the bell pepper until it is charred on all sides. Remove from the grill and place in a shallow bowl; cover with plastic wrap to steam. While it is grilling, remove the stems from the mushroom caps, chop them finely, and mix them with the artichoke hearts, garlic, olives, capers, and olive oil in a flame-resistant skillet. Cover with aluminum foil and cook on the grill for about 20 minutes, or until the garlic is very, very soft (you should almost be able to mash the mixture to a paste). Spray the mushroom caps with cooking spray (I use the canola oil spray) and place gills-up on the grill. Cook until the mushrooms are soft. Remove the mushrooms and fill with antipasto mixture. Place each cap in a foil packet, top with mozzarella slices, and drizzle with olive oil. Cut the French bread in half length-wise, brush it with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and place it face-down on the grill. Cook until the cheese is melted and the bread is toasty.

I love breakfast food. Unfortunately, I am not naturally much of a morning person. So, often when I want eggs and muffins, I have to have them at night, instead of in the morning. My mom used to fix omelets and blueberry muffins for dinner, and so serving traditional breakfast foods when it’s dark outside reminds me of her. She is much better at flipping omelets and getting them to look pretty than I am; my omelets always end up looking a lot like scrambled eggs with other stuff in them. So, to use up leftovers, I like to make frittatas instead. No flipping, and finishing it under the broiler gives the cheese on top a bubbly brown texture that I really like. This one, inspired by my leftover spinach stuffing from the stuffed tomatoes last week, is quick and easy. You can make a frittata with just about anything. The basic recipe is: sauté some vegetables in a heavy oven-proof skillet, top with beaten eggs and cheese, cook until the eggs begin to set around the edges, top with more cheese, and finish under the broiler. The muffins I made to go with the frittata are sweet and crumbly, as good muffins should be. I made them with sugary, crunchy Asian pears from Miller Farms at the Red Stick Market. The frittata cooks quickly, so I prepare the muffins first, and use the time while the muffins are cooking to chop the vegetables and beat the eggs for the frittata.

Pear-Streusel Muffins

2 cups flour

1 cup sugar

1 T. baking powder

½ t. baking soda

1 t. cinnamon

½ t. allspice

2 large eggs

½ stick butter, melted

1 cup buttermilk

1 ½ cups chopped pear

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Mix all of the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Beat together the eggs, butter, and buttermilk. Fold the wet ingredients into the dry; stir until just combined. Add the chopped pears and stir to distribute evenly. Spoon the batter into a greased muffin tin.

For topping:

1 cup chopped walnuts; reserve half to sprinkle on the tops

4 T. flour

4 T. brown sugar

½ stick butter, softened

½ t. cinnamon

Mix all together with your hands until it forms a paste. Top the muffin batter with the streusel topping, and then sprinkle on the reserved walnuts. Bake for about 20 minutes, until the topping is brown and crumbly.

While the muffins are cooking, you can prep your vegetables and get everything ready for the frittata. When the muffins are done, turn the broiler on to preheat.

Spinach-Mushroom Frittata

1 clove garlic, minced

½ yellow onion, thinly sliced

1 cup sliced mushrooms

2-3 T. leftover spinach filling (optional)

1 cup fresh spinach leaves, chopped

4 eggs

½ cup milk

½ cup feta cheese, crumbled

1 cup mild grated cheese of your choice (I used Swiss)

Sauté the garlic, onion, and mushrooms over medium-high heat in an oven-proof skillet (I use a cast-iron one) until tender, about 6 minutes. Stir frequently to make sure garlic doesn’t burn. Add the spinach filling and stir to coat the vegetables; cook another minute or two. Turn the heat down to medium-low, and add the spinach leaves, cooking until wilted. Meanwhile, beat the eggs, milk, and feta cheese together; pour over mushrooms and spinach. Salt and pepper well, but don’t stir. Let the eggs cook slowly until the edges begin to set, about 12-15 minutes. Grate cheese on top, and finish under the broiler; watch carefully, as it only takes a minute or two.

One of the great things about this meal is that leftovers can be enjoyed both in the morning and at night! I like to have the muffins with my afternoon coffee, as well.