The Recession Kitchen

Sweet Potato Casserole, a perfect once-a-year dish

A very quick note for Thanksgiving, which is my favorite holiday of the year. Please do not worry about calorie consumption today. It is a feast day. Feast.

In this vein, if you are looking for a side, wow folks with this sweet potato casserole which is sinfully rich, and has the lovely crunch of pecan combined with velvety smoothness. Oh, there's no marshmallow involved.

Sweet Potato Casserole

Serves a small army as a side.

Needs:

7 lbs. sweet potatoes

3/4 cups white sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar

1T cinnamon

2 t nutmeg

2 T vanilla extract

4 eggs whipped

2 sticks butter (melted)

Mixer.

Lasagna pan.

Method:

Prick and bake sweet potatoes at 425 for at least an hour, turning at least once, until soft. Let cool and scrape all the sweet potatoey goodness out into mixer bowl.

Mix.

Add sugar and mix.

Add spices and mix.

Add vanilla and mix.

Add eggs and mix.

Add butter and mix.

When everything is thoroughly mixed pour into a buttered lasagna pan.

In a new bowl mix:

1/3 cup flour

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup chopped pecans

1/3 stick of melted butter.

Evenly spread the sugary, nutty crust over the sweet potato mixture.

Bake in a 350-oven for at least 30 minutes, taking out when the crust is melty-delicious, the potatoes have that nice casserole bubble and your kitchen is filled with the scent of heavenly goodness (may be up to 45 minutes or so). Also, this holds heat pretty well and re-heats great, which is good to know if you are determining how to ration oven space and time. 

Eat this once a year and you'll be OK. That's all I'll say about that.

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

Deconstructed steak and eggs: Top Chef for Toddlers

Having a toddler means the kitchen is always a playground. I don't mean this in the McDonald's Playland sense. I have neither room nor patience for, say, a Hamburglar slide in my kitchen. But having a young child means food always has room for fun.

Anyone who has ever given a toddler a sandwich understands that the brain of a young eater is filled with curiosity. It won't take long before each slice of bread is thrown aside, the exploration having begun. Soon pieces of cold cuts and cheese will find themselves tossed afield. For the young eater, the deconstruction of a sandwich is as much about play as it is understanding what is hiding beneath those slices of bread. Dining and play are inseparable. And that is how it should it be. After all, food should be more than sustenance, it should be fun.

So, this morning, partly inspired by my son's playful palate, and partly by Episode 6 of this season's Top Chef, I sought to deconstruct a classic: Steak & Eggs. First, I beat an egg and poured it into a skillet, as if I was making an omelet. When it was cooked, I simply flipped it over, cooked the other side and removed the large, flat egg from the skillet. Then I sliced the egg into triangle pizza-like slices. I cut a slice of American cheese into strips. Finally, I cut up some left over sirloin that we'd grilled for last night's dinner.

I plated the dish by placing some egg slices like a sunrise, arranging the cheese like a flower, and the steak in a small pile. I then presented them with some ketchup and a little A-1 because, well, the kid likes to dip stuff.

"Is that mine?" he asked as he sat in his booster seat.

"It is," I told him. "Steak and eggs deconstructed."

"Mmmmm," he replied, as he dug in and devoured his breakfast. I played. He ate. Happiness in the kitchen on a Sunday morning.

Fried Green Tomatoes, a gift of autumn

Each year, the end of summer is announced with a breath of cold air, a warning of frost, a rush to harvest what can be saved and the sizzle of green tomatoes frying in an iron skillet.

Green tomatoes are no longer reserved for gardeners or dinners at bistros specializing in southern cuisine. Many grocery stores now carry the jade colored fruit much of the year. I've noticed they are particularly available around the holidays, which means this may be a good time for you to give them a try.

The appeal of the fried green tomato lies in the salty, tart crunch that can serve as a vessel for any number of sauces. I prefer to dredge mine in a mix of corn meal and flour, though how you treat yours is entirely up to you. The real trick to fried green tomatoes is the patience require to extract as much liquid as you can from the sliced fruit.

I prefer a method that reminds me of the apple drying that was once ubiquitous in northeast preschool classrooms at this time of year. I thinly slice the tomatoes, salt them liberally, then use a lobster poker to run a long length of trussing string through them. I then hang the slices over sink, an emerald necklace, for at least an hour, allowing them to drip.

When much of the juice has been extracted and the slices begin to wilt, I dredge them in a 50/50 mix of corn meal and flour. I then  refrigerate them for about an hour, on parchment paper, before frying them to a golden brown in olive oil. After removing them from the oil, let your treat drain on paper towels.

Then, enjoy.

It is important to use tomatoes that are hard, not soft, as they are the best. Also, play around with this recipe, as you would with any. Before I go, here's a simple dipping sauce I enjoy:

Spicy rouge dipping sauce

1/4 cup mayo

3 T ketchup

1 T Habanero hot sauce

Couple, few shakes of Old Bay seasoning.

Mix, enjoy.

Guest Dish: Chocolate Chip Cookie as Healer by Kathi Baron

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ilovemypit/ / CC BY 2.0

I’m celebrating the chocolate chip cookie. My favorite is when the chips are crunchy sweet, and the dough all around, soft, salty. But I’m not focused on the yum factor. Instead, I’m cheering on the chocolate chip cookie because it is a solution to a problem that I struggled with in writing SHATTERED.

In my first draft, I went on and on telling about how my protagonist Cassie’s family had been slowly unraveling around her. While working on it at Vermont College it was suggested to me that I start the novel with my 32^nd chapter, when Cassie’s dad breaks her violin. I cut thirty-one chapters

While I started in a new place, it was still important to convey to the reader how things had gone downhill. In looking backward, the reader has a chance to gain an understanding of why present events

are significant. Specifically, and especially, the past lends insight as to why 14-year-old Cassie yearns for her family, even after her dad demolishes her beloved Mangenot violin, even after she runs away from home.

The chocolate chip cookie became my champion.  Cassie’s memory of coming home from elementary school to the smell of cookies that her mother had just baked shows us what she has lost.

When Cassie and her mother begin to re-connect, it’s just prior to Thanksgiving. Her mother suggests they do some holiday baking together. Cassie says, “We haven’t made chocolate chip cookies since forever.” Mixed in with her words, we hear her longing, her need to do something with her mom, just like they used to do together. But her mom misses the communication, replying that she was thinking of baking pumpkin pies. Cassie becomes more direct. “But I miss your cookies, Mom;” and she thinks to herself, “And you being around.” Her mom hears her this time, suggesting that they bake a pie for Cassie to take to her best friend’s house at Thanksgiving, so her daughter will be a proper guest; and they can also bake cookies just for the two of them. Cassie pushes further, telling her mom that her best friend will “kill her” if she doesn’t bring her some cookies, too. In her persistence, we see that Cassie not only needs to do something that feels normal—baking chocolate chip cookies with her mom—but also, she wishes to make the healing real. If she takes her favorite cookies to her best friend, her friend becomes a witness to the normalcy, the healing that is occurring for Cassie.

I decided not to show the scene of Cassie baking with her mother. Instead, Cassie comes home from school the day after they baked to be surprised by finding her mom home early from work, in the kitchen. It startles Cassie. Her mom is changing.  She is coming back home, being around more, being more available. Cassie wonders if she’s in the wrong house or if she’s “morphed backward in time to when she was five years old.”

            The chocolate chip cookie is a messenger. It’s a messenger of Cassie’s wishes—to be connected to her mom, her family; a message of hope—Cassie’s hope that they can remain connected; and a kind of sharing, both with her mother and her friend, a way of validating that her family has begun to heal.

            To celebrate, I offer up my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe.

 

Kathi Baron is an Oak Park, IL-based writer. Her debut novel SHATTERED was released by WestSide Books in September. A release party for SHATTERED, will be held Oct 10th, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the Magic Tree Bookstore (141 N. Oak Park Ave., Oak Park, IL) . Interested in picking up the book and meeting this exciting new author? Email: Iris(at)magictreebooks.com to RSVP and reserve a copy. Oh, and Winberie's will be making chocolate chip cookies for the party!

Cook something, in memory of Sheila Lukins

I was just about to log off for the day, when I saw this terribly sad news on the Chicago Tribune. Sheila Lukins, co-author of  The Silver Palate Cookbook is dead. A true pioneer of good food in the United States, Lukins helped cultivate New York City foodies when many Americans still believed that the best food came out of a box and was boiled until tender. She was 66 years old.

Last fall, I had the chance to interview her about her book, Ten. It was one of the most enjoyable conversations I have ever had about food. Lukins had a biting wit and clear understanding of her own significance. But she was also genuinely interested in what I, an unknown freelance food writer working on a piece for a weekly in suburban Chicago, had to say. She wanted to know if I'd converted to smoked paprika. She wondered what it was like to grow-up never wanting for white button mushrooms. She wanted me to know the importance of what I was doing, because, well, here in the Chicago suburbs there were thousands of palates curious about the wonderfulness of food.

There are many kids of people in the world of food. Many, many brilliant people, many pioneers, many artists whose creations dazzle. But Sheila Lukins was a rarity. She had warmth. She was interested in the human side of the culinary experience, how simple ingredients could be combined in new ways to make people want to share them with other people. I know this not only from the few minutes she spent talking with me, but from the outpouring of adoration for her shown by great chefs and grand moms who followed her Parade recipes.  Time will reflect her greatness.

Below is the story that came from my interview. It originally appeared in The Pioneer Press on November 8, 2008. Cook something wonderful tonight, for Sheila Lukins.

BY DAVID JAKUBIAK

Sheila Lukins recently called in to Tom Ashbrook’s “On Point” radio show on National Public radio to talk about her latest cookbook Ten: All the Foods We Love and 10 Perfect Recipes for Each.

Towards the end of her interview, a woman called in and held back tears as she described making Sunday dinners for her children for 25 years out of the book Lukins co-wrote with Julee Rosso in 1982, The Silver Palate Cookbook.

Lukins said it has happened before. She’s written seven books, for a quarter century she’s been the food editor of PARADE, and all along her goal has been making gourmet food accessible, no “weird recipes,” Lukins said.

“They feed their children these foods, like pork chops and potato gratin, and they say they love these recipes because they always work, they can find the ingredients in the supermarket and they taste delicious.”

Her latest work will likely entwine her even more deeply into the souls of cooks. It goes after the foods that are so deep in our subconscious that we can always count on them to call us.

“We all love and crave foods. We all love steaks, we all love lobsters, we all love pasta. Certainly during these depressing times we all love roast chicken, we all love mashed potatoes, especially with lobsters in them. It’s just a time when we all crave certain foods,” she explained.

And so, Lukins set out to write a book of foods we crave and to provide 10 recipes for each. She began, much as she did above – steaks, lobsters, and roast chickens.

Then she thought of seasonal cravings.

“In certain seasons we can’t wait to bite into a fresh slice of tomato, we can’t wait to gobble down some silver queen corn.”

Then she thought of passions “we love chocolate, we adore spare ribs, baby backs, and we all adore ice cream, or most of us do.”

And then there were those special occasion cravings, the “large important roasts.”

By the time Lukins was done thinking of types of foods we crave she had 32 chapters. When you add the recipes for additional sauces, like “tomato-honey jam,” she had nearly 400 recipes. “I make them all right here in my kitchen,” she said.

It was a lot of work, she said, but was totally worth it.

 “You go into a bookstore and you want to poke your eyes out because there are so many cookbooks, and I have written seven cookbooks, so coming up with an idea is very difficult.”

Things have changed since the first publication of The Silver Palate, in this book Lukins dives into international flavors.

“I have always done familiar ingredients in unusual combinations. So, I have a lot of flavors going on in this book, but I have today’s kind of flavors. I have Asian-style ingredients, I have Indian-style ingredients, I have southern-style ingredients, and I have flavors from around the world, which is really what

America

is today.”

But she stresses they are all standard ingredients.

“They’re just my recipes, it’s not weird food. It’s not weird food to do 10 roast chickens. To do a brined roasted chicken or an Asian roasted chicken or an herbed roasted chicken is not odd, or a tandoori style with Indian spices is not weird. I don’t do weird recipes.”

A lot has changed since Lukins and Rosso opened their gourmet shop The Silver Palate in

New York City

back in 1977.

“When we first opened The Silver Palate in 1977 we used to go to the grocer and say, ‘will you please order arugula for us,’ to the person in charge of the produce section. ‘Will you please get arugula in this produce section?’ and they would. There was no arugula. We would say, ‘could you please order button mushrooms?’ There weren’t any in 1977.”

Now, she says, shoppers can step into a supermarket and “you would find chipotle chili powder and you will find Ancho chili powder, and you will find smoked paprika, and that’s because McCormick makes it, and you will find black sesame seeds, you will.”

But just to be sure, Lukins explains all of her ingredients in the book, and even offers tips on where to find them.

“In the beginning I used to get calls asking where to buy lemon zest, and then I realized that’s not funny, they need to know exactly what lemon zest is so they don’t have to worry about where to buy it.”

Calls? Yes, she said, “People have no qualms of calling me at home, because they do that, screaming or happy or whatever.”

As she talks it becomes and clearer why pork chops and potato gratin could, after all these years, bring a caller to tears.

Lukins has opened pantries and filled them with deliciousness, helped to raise children with flavor, empowered at the range, and sparked dreams of cook tops.

“People are saying thank you for making our life in the kitchen easier,” she offered. “Our life in the kitchen was a drudge, thanks for making it fun, thanks for helping us with recipes our kids like, thanks for making our life in the kitchen a lot more fun, and thanks for making it easier.”

Making tomato sauce with homegrown tomatoes

At last, tomato season is in full swing. With each trip to the garden, I surrender more counter space to delicious red globes and pear-shaped Romas that have my mind stuck on the sweet acidity of summer's finest gift.

But I know it won't last. Tomatoes are a cruel treat. In winter you conspire to rig the perfect support structure. In spring you amend your soil to make it just right. As jeans are tucked away and shorts brought, you plant young vines. You battle with pests to make sure you'll be rewarded. You wait and wait for the green to turn red, and then, suddenly, you're inundated! There's no way you can eat them all. Then, just as they start to spoil, uneaten on your counter, they are gone.

Turning some of your tomatoes into sauce is one way to ensure that you can keep some of that summer taste long after summer has become a memory. Sauce is great because it freezes well and reheats quickly. It can be used in a variety of fall dishes from quick pastas to chili to pizza. And it's 100-percent personalized, which you can't get out of any store sauce.

But to make the best tomato sauce out of homegrown tomatoes there are some things you need to know.

First, tomato selection does matter. Chopping up a bunch of beefsteaks and expecting a marinara is likely to leave you deflated and hungry. The fact is that tomato seeds are a wickedly bitter thing. So varieties with lots of seeds, your typical BLT tomatoes, don't typically make the best sauce. I try to grow at least four Roma plants each year, strictly for making sauce. If you only have big hybrids, you can still make sauce, but do you best to de-seed them before cooking them down. You can add some sugar to your sauce to help counter act the bitterness.

To make a good sauce, you'll also want to skin your tomatoes. At first blush this can seem a daunting task. Shoot, I don't like pealing peaches for cobbler. But there is a time-tested trick to getting those skins right off. Boil some water, drop your tomatoes in for a few moments. Wait for the skin to split, remove, and drop into a bowl of ice water. Do not over-boil your tomatoes, just leave them cooking long enough for the skin to split. After they have cooled, the skin should slip right off.

Set aside a fair amount of time for making your sauce. Homegrown tomatoes, fresh tomatoes, will have a much higher water content. This means they may need several hours to cook down to a consistency you'd think of as sauce, but give it time, and a nice even medium temperature, and you will be rewarded. You can cheat and add some tomato paste, but trust me, getting a sauce that is all your tomatoes is totally worth it.

I don't like to put too much extra into any sauces that I'll be freezing. I'll use a little garlic and a little onion, perhaps a bay leaf, a shake of garlic powder, and some salt. That's about it. If you want to add more, go right ahead. I prefer to keep mine simple which allows for more uses down the road.

Oh, and one more thing, if you are going to be using fresh herbs -- since they too are their height in the summer garden -- do not add them until very late in the cooking process. Giving chopped herbs five minutes is more than enough time. The oils in fresh herbs will be lost very quickly in a simmering sauce, and you don't want to loose those flavors.

Until next time, be well. I'm off to make a BLT!

Digging Onions

Back in March, I received a package from Johnny's. Inside of a small box were about 110 tiny onion plants. I hurried out into my yard, and dug into the soil, which had barely been warmed by the first rays promising spring. I planted them, more tightly than recommended, knowing that I would eat several long before they reached maturity.

A week later they were covered by three inches of snow. Despite my doubts, spring did eventually arrive. With it came unprecedented rains, and my onions loved 'em. They burst, sending greens some four feet high. I delighted and harvested several just for those very greens, adding them to stir fry, mashed potatoes, and omelets. As Spring pushed toward summer, I plucked a dozen or so onions, just as their bulbs started to swell. I doused them with olive oil and balsamic and tossed them on the grill. Soon, they were big enough to pull for proper use as onions, and since early July that's just what we've been doing.

But in recent weeks the rains of spring have become a thing of memory. Late July and August had, until yesterday, been mostly dry. The heat also arrived two weeks ago. With it, my onions, about 130 days in the ground, began their winter preparations. The green slowly drained into the bulbs leaving brown tufts behind, and skins began to form wrapping around the bulbs with their thin paper.

It was time to harvest. Our final haul was 67 onions. I haven't weighed then, but they are weighty. I have braided them, and left them outside in the hot sun for several days to dry. Yesterday I moved them inside. I'll let them finish in the basement, then I'll store them. If I'm lucky, they will carry me through November. If they do, I'll get four months of onions for $11.80.

Take that, Budget!

Pesto Change-O! Summer in a pasta bowl.

 

Enough with the red sauce. It's time to think green.

Summer remains largely elusive, but some things in the garden have done delightfully well. Already one eggplant has been sliced and fried. My pepper plants -- from jalapenos to yellow bells -- are heavy with offerings. And my cucumber vines are finally giving up their deliciousness, which require only a quick peeling and a dash of salt.

Great activity also reigns in the herb bed. While my flat leaf parsley can't seem to get going,  my other herbs are loving the warm days and cool evenings. I have a hedge of tarragon. My oregano shrub is being visited daily by some of the most wicked pollinators you could imagine. At the top of my own personal favorites list is the sweet basil, and my tiny basil forest of six plants has, at last, reached a point where I can do some serious harvesting. This, of course, of course means that it's pesto time.

I will concede something right off the bat. My pesto is not a classic Italian pesto. I apologize to those of you who have bicycled through the mountains of Italy and experienced real, hand chopped pesto, with it's unrivaled blend of basil, olive oil, pine nuts, and freshly grated Romano cheese.  Mine is Americanized. It's heavy on the garlic. It uses walnuts instead of pine nuts, mostly because walnut pieces are markedly less expensive than pine nuts, and it uses store-bought Trader Joe's Argentinian Parmesan cheese that has been pre-pulverized.

But I don't cheat on my basil. I make Pesto, if I'm lucky, three times a year. I usually make three to five cups at once, use some, and freeze the rest. It freezes well, which is great because I can pull it out again in January and enjoy a taste of sunshine in the dead of winter. To me, the key to pesto the basil. It is to get the leaves - no stems - right off of your plants, at the height of their growing season. This is when the plant's oils are most potent, and when it's leaves are the most sweet. It is why I grow basil, and why you, if you also love pesto, should spring for that pack of basil seeds.

Another great thing about Pesto is that it begs experimentation. The recipe below is not a mandate. It is a suggestion. The measurements are a starting point for a recipe that requires little more than an idea and food processor. Taste it as you go. If there's too much garlic, add more cheese and basil, if it's too dense, add more oil or a few spoons of pasta water.

Also, use it on whatever you like: straight-up with tortellini, saute some shrimp and toss it with linguine, grill some chicken and throw it over penne. Make a pizza. Make a sandwich. It's all up to you.

Pesto

2 cups packed basil leaves, washed and patted dry.
6 cloves of garlic*
1/2 cup walnut pieces
1 cup grated Parmesan
Salt
Pepper
1 cup extra virgin olive oil.

* if you are less of a garlicphile than I, start with 3 cloves and work your way up.

Method

1. Toss your garlic in the food processor and obliterate it.
2. Throw everything but the olive in and grind to a paste.
3. With food processor running, slowly pour in your oil and blend until everything is mixed.
4. Taste. Play.

The year without BLTs

It is the last week of July, and I have yet to eat my first BLT of the summer. There are several culinary joys that I associate with summer, things like fried clams, corn on the cob, and watermelon. But for me, the first BLT, made with a home grown tomato, sits above all others. There is a sweetness in a tomato grown in your own soil that simply can not be matched by the one's you buy at the store. Even the farmer's market tomato lacks the panache of the home grown variety.

This, of course, may be entirely in my mind, and that would make perfect since. After all, I spend hours each spring preparing the soil for where my tomato plants will spread their roots. As soon as the second week in May arrives, I hurry to nursery store to select the most robust specimens I can find. I rush home, plant them, and make sure I have the perfect cage or enough clips to give them the support they need. And as the season progresses I watch over them for scourges like white fly or the hideous tomato worm. All of this effort would hardly be worth it if the same outcome could be matched by a trip to the grocery or farmer's market. But it simply is not.

Excitement accompanies seeing the first bee alight on the pale yellow flower. Anticipation floods as the bright green fruit swells and starts to ripen. Then, one morning, you step outside and there in the deep green of a 7-foot-vine rests a deep red globe. You pluck it, rush inside and rinse it off. You reach for a knife and slice into its flesh, not mushy like a tomato picked thousands of miles away, but dense like a perfectly roasted prime rib. The scent of the fresh tomato is part sunshine and part sweet acidity. You reach for the salt, just to give a sprinkle, and when you devour that first slice, you know. Every moment spent has been worth it. It's BLT Time, at last.

But not this year. This year it just has not been warm enough for optimal tomato plant growth. The few days of heat and humidity have be enveloped in weeks of sub-normal temperatures. Tomato plants don't like cool. They like hot and humid. Cool stresses them. Stress reduces fruit production. It all adds up to a terrible prognosis for BLTs.

There are some fruits on my tomato plants. My hybrid varieties, a Early Girl and a Beefsteak, are spotted with green offerings. But they are small, maybe twice the size of cherry tomatoes, and they are colored a deep green. They've been this way for weeks now. Apparently frozen in jade, apprehensive about taking that next step toward deliciousness.

The Chicago Tribune has a story today suggesting that this may be remembered as the year without summer. But here in the Recession Kitchen, two pounds of bacon sit in the freezer. The first lettuce has already bolted, and the next crop has yet to mature. And the tomatoes are napping the season away.

It is the year without BLTs.

Had to share this.