Corn Stuffing

It is October. It is also, for whatever reason, still in the high 70's here, which seems pretty unusual for this time of year in Minnesota. My seasonal meal planning has shifted over to fall, which must mean I'm ready for it, but the weather outside remains warm and pleasantly breezy.

Presumably it is behaving like fall somewhere, and it will eventually do so here, as well. In the meantime, I'm cooking as though the temperatures are about 30 degrees lower than they are, and that suits me just fine.

Today I roasted a chicken. If you'd like to know how, or to be reminded of how insanely straightforward it is to accomplish this in your very own kitchen, I wrote all about it two winters ago, right here.

I also made corn stuffing today. That I will talk about, because it was my first effort at such a project, and I can heartily recommend it. It so happens that last night I made cornbread (the recipe on the Quaker cornmeal box is quick and easy), and today I realized that I had half a pan of it left, and it occurred to me that perhaps corn stuffing would be just the thing to accompany the chicken I was about to pop in the oven.

Say what you will about Rachael Ray, but her cookbooks contain simple recipes for food I want to eat. In this case, I turned to Get Togethers, which was a thoughtful gift from my sister a few years ago. This cookbook is arranged into meals, but I found a corn stuffing recipe buried in her "Giving Grazie: Italian-Style Thanksgiving" meal, adjusted it slightly (as it called for celery and prosciutto, neither of which I had on hand), and subbed in half a pan of leftover cornbread for the "three corn muffins, crumbled" that the recipe suggests. I also added a can of mushrooms to replace the bulk of those ingredients I skipped.

Here's what I made, and it is delicious:

Corn Stuffing

adjusted from Rachael Ray's "Corn, Sage, and Prosciutto Stuffing"

1 Tbsp olive oil

2 Tbsp butter

1 medium onion, chopped

1 small can mushrooms, drained

salt and pepper, to taste

2 tsp poultry seasoning (I used Bell's)

2 sprigs dried sage, chopped (2 Tbsp)

half a pan of leftover cornbread (or 3 corn muffins)

1 cup chicken broth

Heat a skillet over medium-high heat, combine olive oil and butter. When the butter melts into the oil, add the onion, mushrooms, salt and pepper, and poultry seasoning. Saute 5 minutes, until onions are softened. Add sage, stir to combine. Crumble cornbread into the pan. Moisten with broth and heat through. Remove from heat, and cover with foil to keep warm.

Avocado Corn Salad

I recently posted about a salad that looks, tastes, and is very healthy. However, this salad that I made today looks, tastes, and is the most delicious way to consume summer vegetables that I may ever have experienced - and, what's truly great, is that it is healthy, as well. The dressing is lime juice, after all.

The Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home cookbook never ceases to amaze, and this is just another fine example of how their easy and straightforward recipes are just incredible. I was flipping through this cookbook in search of a cucumber recipe, actually, but the page landed open at this Avocado Corn Salad, and I realized that I just so happened to have all the ingredients on hand -and so I made it immediately. I suggest that you do the same.

Avocado Corn Salad

Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home

Serves 2 (or one hungry person)

1 cup fresh or frozen cut corn

1 Tbsp vegetable oil

2 Tbsp water

1 tsp ground cumin

pinch of cayenne or red pepper flakes

1 medium avocado

2 Tbsp fresh lime juice

1/2 medium red bell pepper

2 Tbsp minced red onion

salt to taste

dash of hot sauce (I'm partial to Frank's)

whole or chopped cilantro leaves (optional)

In a skillet, combine the corn, oil, water, cumin, and optional cayenne or red pepper flakes. Cook, covered, on medium heat for 5 minutes, or until the corn is tender. Uncover and cook for an additional minute or two to evaporate the excess moisture. Set aside to cool.

Slice the avocado in half lengthwise, and gently twist to remove the pit. Make lengthwise and crosswise cuts in the flesh every 1/2 inch. Scoop the avocado cubes out of the shells and into a large bowl. Gently stir in the lime juice. Cut the bell pepper into 1/2 inch pieces and add to the bowl. Stir in the red onion and cooked corn. Stir. Add salt and hot sauce to taste, and top with cilantro if you like.

Serve immediately, or chill for 30 minutes and then serve.

Cream of Broccoli Soup

I have committed to consuming a big box of fresh and local vegetables every two weeks. Sometimes, that's the easiest way to think about my CSA deal. It being August, there's an awful lot of broccoli showing up at my door, and since the temperatures have been hovering somewhere nearer to 70 than 100 lately, the idea of soup didn't seem so bad, all of a sudden. It being summer, and as you can see in this picture, I also chopped up some small tomatoes with basil and drizzled oil and vinegar over the top.

Mark Bittman, and his How to Cook Everything cookbook, suggested a Cream of Broccoli Soup that sounded just fine to me - and it was both simple and delicious. He notes that it works with lots of vegetables - carrots, cauliflower, celery... you know, the standard "Cream of ___ Soup" options.

If you do include rice, as I did, be sure to puree it pretty thoroughly - otherwise you get sort of distracting rice bits in each spoonful. This is an excellent candidate for the immersion blender - it removes the entire "transfer to a blender without burning yourself, blend the hot soup, wash the pan, put the puree back in the pan and heat without boiling" portion of the event.

I made half a recipe, but I'm including the full recipe here.

Cream of Broccoli Soup

adapted from How to Cook Everything

Serves 4

1 lb broccoli, trimmed and cut up (I peeled and sliced the stalks to include, too). 1 pound of broccoli is about 4 loosely packed cups.

1/2 medium onion, chopped

1 Tbsp butter

1/2 cup rice or 1 medium baking potato, peeled and cut into quarters

4 cups chicken, beef, or vegetable stock, or water

salt and pepper to taste

1/4 to 1 cup heavy or light cream or half-and-half

minced fresh parsley leaves or chives for garnish

Chop up the broccoli and set aside. Chop up the onion and cook it at a low temperature in the butter for a few minutes, or until softened. Add the broccoli and cook for a few minutes. Add the rice and stock and turn the heat to medium-high. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to medium and cook until the vegetables are very tender, about 15 minutes.

Cool slightly, then puree in a food mill or a blender. Return to the pot and reheat over medium-low heat. Season with salt and pepper, add the cream. Heat through again, garnish and serve.

Salads are Healthy

There's this idea that most salads are healthy. I have to admit, though, that I usually find the most delicious salads to be the ones that involve things like... steak, or blue cheese, or hard-boiled eggs, or all of the above. Those salads, however, would be just put to shame if placed in a healthy salads contest with the one I just made and ate. It was delicious, but boy-oh-boy, it was primarily healthy. If that's what you're looking for, this might be just the thing.

My grand CSA adventure continues this summer, and this recipe - Lebanese Chard & Bean Salad - was provided by the newsletter writers at Driftless Organics. They have this delightful habit of sharing recipes that include (and help to use up) some of the vegetables in the accompanying CSA veggie box. This is one of those recipes. I have no idea if this is truly a Lebanese recipe or not, but I can confirm that it's a healthy salad that looks nice and tastes good.

By the way, take a look at these Dragon Tongue Beans. They are so pretty. Once cooked, they lose their nifty purple detailing (which the CSA newsletter warned me about), so I took a picture of them prepped but pre-cooked.

Lebanese Chard & Bean Salad

4 cups chard (I used some greens - arugula and purple mizuna)

1 cup green, purple or dragon tongue beans, cut into thirds

1/2 medium onion, finely sliced

1/3 cup plain yogurt

1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice

1 Tbsp fresh parsley, chopped

1/2 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped and toasted (I got lazy and didn't include these)

1/2 cup sweet peppers, very thinly sliced

Steam chard for a minute or two, until just wilted. Run under cold water to cool & drain. Arrange it on a serving platter. Steam beans for a couple of minutes, cool, drain, & place on top of wilted greens. Arrange onion & sweet pepper slices on top of beans. Mix yogurt, lemon juice and parsley together in a small bowl and drizzle over salad. Top with walnuts and extra parsley for garnish. Add toasted pita wedges for a complete meal!

Pasta Primavera

A few months ago, when spring-like vegetables were beginning to show up at the grocery store, but it was still rather chilly and rainy outside (and in these northern states, spring-like vegetables were still very much in hibernation), I made this pasta for book club. It was a big hit, and I suspect that now that it is mid-June, those of us in northern climates can obtain many of these ingredients locally – maybe even at farmer’s markets.

Gourmet published a “Passover Pasta Primavera” recipe in April 2008 that included a way to make the pasta from matzo meal, and in March 2011, thekitchn.com rounded up “7 Fresh Ideas for Spring Pastas” and this one made the cut. I used standard linguine rather than making the matzo meal pasta, but otherwise I followed the recipe quite precisely, and I was pleased with the results.

I recommend cutting all the vegetables, but particularly the asparagus, at an angle. Big diagonal “coins” look nice and cook quickly, and take less effort than painstakingly cutting long skinny vegetables into a million small discs. Apparently in cooking lingo, I’m talking about “Bias Slicing” – and if you’d like an explanation, with photos, you can find that on the Better Homes and Gardens website.

Pasta Primavera

1 lb pasta (linguine or fettucine)

2 Tbsp olive oil

1/2 lb asparagus, trimmed and thinly sliced, leaving tips whole

1 medium zucchini, halved lengthwise, then thinly sliced crosswise

1 cup frozen peas

6 scallions, thinly sliced, keeping white and pale green parts separate from greens

1/3 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano plus some for serving

1 tsp grated lemon zest

Cook in a pasta pot of boiling salted water until just tender, 1 to 2 minutes. Reserve 1 cup cooking water, then drain pasta in a colander.

Heat oil in a 12-inch heavy skillet over medium-high heat until it shimmers, then saute asparagus, zucchini, peas, white and pale green parts of scallions, and 1/2 tsp salt, stirring occasionally, until vegetables begin to soften, about 5 minutes.

Add 1/2 cup reserved cooking water to vegetables and cook, shaking skillet occasionally, until vegetables are just tender, about 2 minutes. Stir in pasta and scallion greens until just coated with sauce. Remove from heat and stir in cheese and zest. Stir in more reserved water if desired. Serve with additional parmesan.

Fish Otis

The Moosewood Cookbook that I have is primarily vegetarian, but does include some fish recipes, and this is an excellent one. It calls for "firm fish fillets" and assumes there will still be a side with skin attached. I used skinless tilapia fillets this time, but I suspect it'd be even better with something a bit heftier, like cod. The sour cream and dill are a nice flavor, and when served on egg noodles as the recipe suggests, the sauce mingles with the noodles well. Paired with a salad or simple vegetable, this is a quick and rewarding weeknight meal!

Fish Otis

Serves 2

10-12 ounces firm fish fillets

4 tsp fresh lemon juice

2 tsp chopped fresh dill (or 3/4 tsp dried)

dash of salt and pepper

1/3-1/2 cup sour cream

2-3 thick slices red onion

Preheat the oven to 375. Rinse and dry the fish fillets and place them, skin side down, in an oiled baking pan. Sprinkle with the lemon juice, dill, salt and pepper. Spread the sour cream evenly over the fillets. Break the onion slices into rings and press them into the sour cream.

Cover the pan and bake until the fish is no longer translucent and flakes easily with a fork. The amount of time varies with the thickenss of the fish, but it usually takes 25 to 30 minutes.

Pear Coffee Cake

I woke up to a cold and rainy Sunday morning, with an over-ripe pear in my fruit bowl. I knew immediately that the perfect answer to this circumstance was to make this coffee cake that my mom made once when I was home visiting during college. I often make it with canned pears, which works fine - but using the fresh one I had today, ripe as it was, resulted in a better texture. The recipe calls for orange and lemon zest, but I didn't use either, and that was fine (though it was lacking some if the citrus zip that it would have otherwise had).

Pear Coffee Cake

Preheat the oven to 350. Halve and core a fresh pear and cut it into wedges. As the oven warms, melt 3 Tbsp butter in an 8" round cake pan (or a pie pan, or a 9" square pyrex). Arrange the pear wedges over the bottom of the pan.

Combine:

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 tsp ginger

1 tsp orange peel, grated

1 tsp lemon peel, grated

Sprinkle half of the above mixture over the pear wedges.

Beat together:

1 egg

1/2 cup milk

1/4 cup vegetable oil

Mix together and then add to egg mixture until just combined:

1 1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup sugar

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp salt

Pour batter over pears. Sprinkle remaining brown sugar mixture over the top and marble through the batter with a knife. Bake for 30 minutes. Let stand 5 minutes before inverting over a plate. Serve warm.

Butternut Squash and Blue Cheese Risotto Soup

This recipe, which may actually be my new favorite homemade meal, has a lot to offer. The squash is pleasantly sweet and tender, the gorgonzola is salty, the arborio rice is creamy, and a little sage pulls it all together with an earthy sort of undertone. I'm pretty sure they just called this recipe a soup so that it could be included in this cookbook, which I have mentioned here before, Best-Ever Soups. If you don't own it yet, please put it on your list of cookbooks to obtain. It's less than $5 on amazon.com, and it provides endless soup discoveries. Or in this case (rather like a bonus round!), risotto.

I halved the recipe to two servings, which worked fine (though mine is less soup-like and more risotto-like than what the cookbook showed). This isn't a terribly complicated recipe, but it does take about an hour and a half to prepare it. That's largely because it takes both time (particularly to peel and chop the squash) and (more time) and patience, as you go through the whole risotto routine - add broth, wait... add broth, wait...

Butternut Squash and Blue Cheese Risotto Soup

Serves 4

2 Tbsp butter

2 Tbsp olive oil

2 onions, finely chopped

1/2 celery stick, finely sliced

1 small butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cut into 1/2 inch cubes

1 Tbsp chopped sage

1 1/2 cups arborio rice

5 cups hot chicken stock

2 Tbsp heavy cream (I used evaporated milk)

4 oz blue cheese, finely diced (I used gorgonzola)

salt and pepper, to taste

Place the butter and oil in a large plan and heat gently. Add the onions and celery, and cook for 4-5 minutes, until softened. Stir in the squash and cook for 3-4 minutes. Add the sage. Add the rice and cook for 1-2 minutes, stirring, until the grains are slightly translucent. Add the chicken stock a ladleful at a time. Cook until each ladleful of stock has been absorbed before adding the next. Continue adding the stock this way until you have a very wet rice mixture. Season to taste. Stir in the cream. Stir in the blue cheese, and serve.

Shepherd's Pie

Sometimes, when the wind is blowing at record breaking speeds, darkness is setting in before you leave work, and a long winter lies ahead, you just want to eat something comforting. Furthermore, you want to eat it soonish, and with very little effort involved. Boy, do I have the recipe for you! In October of 2007, this Easy Shepherd's Pie recipe caught my attention, and it was just exactly what I found myself wanting to eat this week.

I got Real Simple magazine for a couple of years, until their suggestions started to feel familiar and the recipes I had flagged in them were piling up. I decided, at that point, not to resubscribe. But I certainly flip back through the old issues, and I recently found that you can find recipes very easily on their website - in this case, I knew what I was looking for, I just wasn't sure which old issue I would find it in. You can do searches by keywords or ingredients or cuisines or all variety of other options.

Here it is - the shamelessly modernized and Americanized version of what I imagine to be a centuries old tradition... probably involving meat scraps and whatever else was lying around! This version requires mostly things I have on hand, and a few things I can purchase with ease if I must. It takes 10 minutes to cook the beef and preheat the oven, 10 minutes to bake. Read beyond the recipe for my tips related to speeding up the mashed potato element of this recipe.

Easy Shepherd's Pie

Real Simple, October 2007

Heat the oven to 400.

Brown 1 lb ground beef.

Stir in 1/3 cup ketchup and 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce.

Add 8 oz of mixed frozen vegetables (carrots, peas, corn, green beans - whatever - thawed).

Cook one minute.

Put in a baking dish.

Mix 1 lb of mashed potatoes with 1/4 cup cheddar (cheese is optional).

Spread potatoes on top of beef and vegetables.

Bake 10 minutes.

Enjoy!

In my case, I realized on Tuesday that I wanted to eat Shepherd's Pie, but I was unwilling to leave the house for ingredients. I looked up the recipe, moved a variety of frozen vegetables into the refrigerator to get a start on thawing, and I made a huge batch of mashed potatoes for dinner (with chicken and carrots, because I had those on hand, but that's a story for another time). If I'd had ground beef in the freezer, I would have shifted that over to thawing mode, as well. But I didn't, so I started a grocery list, instead.

Tonight after work I stopped for ground beef, came home, threw the recipe together, and I'm eating it now, while I write this post!

Here's my note about mashed potatoes. Real Simple suggests that you buy a 1 lb bin of pre-made mashed potatoes from the grocery store. I did that once, just out of curiosity, and they were actually quite good, and did eliminate the need to make mashed potatoes. However, if the goal is to make this recipe quickly, I solved that problem this time by making the potatoes in advance, so the shepherd's pie took less than 30 minutes to make. Also, mashed potatoes are incredibly easy. Here's roughly how Rachel Ray suggests doing it, in her Get Togethers cookbook:

Mashed Potatoes

Peel and cut into chunks, 1 pound of potatoes (2 large potatoes).

Place them in a pot, covered with water. Cover the pot, bring to a boil, and lightly salt. Leave uncovered and simmer at a rolling boil until tender, 8-10 minutes.

Drain the potatoes, and return them to the hot pan. Mash them with half-and-half, butter, cream, milk, roasted garlic, Boursin cheese, or whatever else you like.

I used a generous splash of half-and-half, a few tablespoons of butter, salt and freshly ground pepper. I had cooked three or four large handfuls of tiny potatoes, which I did not peel, as I know they were grown organically and their peel is therefore very good for me, and not at all chemical-ridden as some peel may very well be (mine are from our well stocked CSA box potato supply!).

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

My mom used to make these cookies from a recipe she once got from a friend. When I was in college, my sister made some and sent them to me, and then when she was in college, I made some and sent them to her. For reasons we still don't understand, the ones I sent her took more than a month to navigate through the postal service and into her campus mail box. From what I have heard, she wanted to eat them so badly that she was pulling the chocolate chips out and nibbling on those. Her roommate had to forcibly remove the box from her hands and dispose of the contents.

The good news is that now that neither of us lives in dorm rooms, we can easily make these cookies any time we like. They are quick and easy and delicious. Everyone I've fed them to has loved them. Better yet - they don't have any butter or milk, so even my lactose-free friends can enjoy them! The pumpkin makes them moist, and they travel well (which is why we got in the habit of mailing them to each other in the past!).

Bake them! Eat them! Share them with your friends!

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Mix together:

1 cup cooked pumpkin

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup oil

1 egg

Combine, in a separate bowl:

2 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

Combine, in a tiny bowl:

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp milk

Mix those three bowls together.

Stir in:

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup chocolate chips

1/2 cup nuts (optional)

Spoon onto cookie trays, and bake at 375 for 10-12 minutes.

Red Rice

I once mailed $10 or so to the folks at Better Homes and Gardens, and they have been sending me their magazine for more than two years as a consequence. I know from the ominous letters and postcards that I've been receiving from them lately that the October issue was my last, and that's okay. I've enjoyed their magazine, and gotten some great recipes from them, but as a single person who lives in an apartment, I can't do much with their hosta replanting schemes or their children's birthday party decorating ideas. Better Homes and Gardens tends to be a casserole and cookies kind of recipe source, but recently, they've started running a column by chef Scott Peacock that gets to the bottom of "American Home Cooking" with traditional recipes for more complicated fare than usually gets tackled here. The "Shrimp-and-Sausage Red Rice" recipe in this column of the September issue was quite possibly life changing and most certainly repertoire changing. In fact, if this recipe was the only thing I ever got from the experience (though it wasn't - I have a few other standard favorites that I discovered in this magazine), the two years were totally worth it.

If I ate this meal at a restaurant, I would bring all my friends back over and over again to share the experience. Instead, I plan to cook it a lot in the future and share it with my friends that way! I cooked the entire recipe, which serves 6. I ate it for two dinners and two lunches, and froze the rest of it. I can't wait to thaw it out and eat the rest. It is absolutely phenomenal.

Shrimp-and-Sausage Red Rice

(don't ask me why it's hyphenated, I'm just writing what I see)

Better Homes and Gardens, September 2010

3 Tbsp bacon drippings

1/2 cup chopped onion

1/2 cup chopped green sweet pepper

1 small jalapeno pepper, seeded and finely chopped (Careful! Don't get burned!)

3 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 tsp dried thyme, crushed

1/2 tsp crushed red pepper (optional)

1/2 tsp kosher salt

freshly ground pepper

1 14.5 oz can whole tomatoes, drained and crushed

1 rounded Tbsp tomato paste

2 cups chicken stock or water (I used chicken stock)

1 Tbsp butter

1 cup long grain rice

8 oz andouille or cooked, smoked chorizo sausage, sliced in 1/2 inch rounds

1 cup sliced fresh okra (this recipe made me appreciate okra - be sure to use it!)

1 lb peeled and deveined shrimp (I used frozen cooked shrimp, thawed and drained)

In a large skillet heat bacon drippings. Add onion; cook over medium-low heat without stirring for 5 minutes. Add the sweet pepper, jalapeno, garlic, thyme, and crushed red pepper. Sprinkle with 1/2 tsp salt and a few grinds of black pepper. Cook over low heat for 8 to 10 minutes or until onion and pepper are soft but not browned.

Add tomatoes and tomato paste. Stir in stock; bring to a simmer. Cover and simmer gently for 15-20 minutes. Taste carefully for seasoning (broth should be highly seasoned to flavor the rice).

In a heavy, wide-bottom nonreactive pot or heavy 12-inch skillet heat butter over medium heat until melted. Add rice; cook, stirring constantly, for 1-2 minutes until rice becomes translucent. Carefully stir in the hot tomato mixture. Cover quickly and cook over low heat for 20 minutes. Add the sausage and okra, mixing in gently with two forks. Return cover and cook 10 minutes longer over very low heat, just until most of the liqued is absorbed and the rice is tender.

Sprinkle shrimp lightly with salt and pepper. Stir the shrimp into the rice mixture. Cover and cook 3 minutes longer, just until shrimp is opaque. Remove from heat and let rest for 5 minutes before serving.

Curried Eggplant and Potatoes

I received some nice curry powder as a gift some time ago, and I've been meaning to use it. Recently, I got some nice potatoes from my CSA, and a nice eggplant from a friend's garden, and I thought that this recipe might be just the thing. Then it turned out that there isn't actually any curry powder in this recipe. I made it anyway.

I often invite people over for dinner, but just as often, I cook for myself. I halve most recipes (you've probably noticed that on here), and then I usually have leftovers for at least one lunch, and sometimes I freeze leftovers for another time. I really enjoy cooking, and it's nice to make dinner decisions based on what I feel like eating, and what I have around the kitchen. But every once in a while, and this was one of those times, I wonder midway into the effort just why I'm trying so hard. Let me explain.

When I was peeling the potatoes for this recipe, I clipped my finger tip slightly - nothing serious, not even any blood, but it stung quite a bit, and it certainly slowed down my momentum. I wrapped up my finger with a bandage to protect it from the food (and the food from it, for that matter), and forged ahead. I measured all the spices, and peeled and minced the ginger, and peeled and sliced the garlic, and salted the eggplant and cubed the potatoes. I began to cook the spices, took a picture (for this very blog post), turned around, and the pan of spices had burned right into a solid, smoking, black disk.

I turned off the heat, nursed my finger, scooped out the burned disk of spices, and washed the pan - burning my hand slightly when some hot oil spattered. At this point, my momentum pretty much halted. I looked around at the sliced and salted eggplant, which had been resting for two hours, at the potatoes that I had hurt myself preparing, and at the can of tomatoes I had already opened. I tipped up my chin, put the pan back on the stove, and began measuring out the spices again, peeling and slicing more garlic, and peeling and mincing more ginger. I proceeded carefully, monitored temperatures closely, and everything came together as it was meant to. At 10:30, I sat down with a bowl of curried eggplant and potatoes and thought, "It's really a shame that there's nobody else to enjoy this." The next day I invited a friend over for dinner, told her the story, and served the leftovers on rice. She confirmed my findings - this recipe is delicious.

Lest you be scared off - it's actually quite simple, too. Keep your fingertips in while you peel, and monitor those temperatures when you initially heat the spices in the oil. It's smooth sailing from there! I halved this recipe, but wish that I hadn't - it would freeze nicely, and I could eat it many times before tiring of it! Here's the recipe in full.

Curried Eggplant and Potatoes

from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman

Serves 6

2 medium-to-large eggplants

salt

1 Tbsp canola oil

1 tsp mustard seeds

1/2 tsp cayenne

1/2 tsp ground turmeric

2 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp ground cumin

1 Tbsp peeled and minced fresh ginger

2 Tbsp sliced garlic

4 Tbsp butter

3 large tomatoes, cored, peeled, seeded, and chopped (canned are fine, don't bother to drain)

3 large potatoes, any kind, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch cubes

freshly ground black pepper to taste

about 1 cup water, or more if needed

2 Tbsp freshly squeezed lime juice

minced cilantro leaves for garnish

Peel the eggplant if the skin is thick or the eggplant is less than perfectly firm. Cut it into 1/2 inch cubes and salt if it you like. (I did - just sprinkle salt generously over each side of the eggplant and let it sit in a colander for at least half an hour. Rinse and squeeze dry between paper towels before using.)

Combine the oil and mustard seeds in a large deep skillet. Turn the heat to medium and cook until the seeds begin to pop, about 2 minutes. Add the remaining spices, the ginger, the garlic, and the butter and cook, stirring occasionally, until the ginger and garlic soften, about 5 minutes.

Add the tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, salt, and pepper, and about a cup of water. Turn the heat to medium-low and cover; cook, stirring once or twice, for about 30 minutes.

Remove the cover and turn the heat to medium; add more water if the mixture is dry. Cook, stirring occasionally, until both the eggplant and potatoes are very tender, about 15 minutes longer. Stir in the lime juice and adjust the seasoning to your taste. Garnish and serve.

Acorn Squash

Last year, we had temperatures in the 90s well into September. I remember swimming in late September and making note of the fact that it was highly unusual. And so, this year, we are having a more usual fall. Which is to say that right about Labor Day, temperatures dropped considerably, and it feels wildly appropriate to wear sweaters, drink hot cider, and... eat squash!

The trickiest thing about squash, hands down, is cutting it in half. Sometimes the store sells them already split, which is kind of nice. But when I got the above squash from my friend's garden, it was whole. Which turned out okay in the end, as I managed (with a bit of strength, a sharp knife, and the powers of leverage) to get it cut into two pieces. From then, it's easy enough - but I do always forget what temperature to roast it at, and for how long. For that, I turned to the trusty How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. I took the above picture just before the squash went into the oven - lining your pan in tin foil is a good idea, as things can get a little sticky.

Here are the details:

Roasting Hard-to-Peel Winter Squash

1 acorn or other winter squash, washed

2 Tbsp butter or olive oil, more or less

salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

maple syrup or brown sugar

Preheat the oven to 400. Cut the squash in half and scrape out the strings and seeds. In each half, put some butter, salt, pepper and sweetener (I used maple syrup). Place in a baking dish, (I used my 8x8 pyrex, lined with tin foil) cut side up, and bake until tender, about 1 hour. Serve.

(You can scoop the squash and it's flavorings into a serving bowl and mash it all together, or simply serve each individual half a squash, for scooping out at the table.)

Sweet Pepper Soup

I made this soup last summer, truly enjoyed it, and then I totally forgot about it. When my CSA box recently arrived with a generous number of sweet peppers, the bright colors set off some kind of bell in my head, and I felt an urgent need to locate this recipe and make the soup again! I found it, happily, in my Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home cookbook, which is one of my favorites. This soup is delicious and can be made very quickly. It's not terribly filling, so I recommend serving it for dinner with a cheese quesadilla and salad, or eating it with a sandwich for lunch, or something along those lines.

Sweet Peppers Soup

Serves 4 (However, I halve this recipe and it works fine, and fed me for three meals)

2 cups chopped onion

1 Tbsp butter or vegetable oil

6 cups chopped red and green bell peppers (about 6 peppers)

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

1/4 tsp cayenne

2 cups water or vegetable stock (I used chicken stock)

1 cup sour cream (plain yogurt works, too)

2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice

fresh chopped cilantro

In a covered soup pot, saute the onions on medium heat in the butter or oil for about 3 minutes, until barely softened. Add the bell peppers and spices and cook, covered, until just soft, stirring occasionally. In a blender or food processor (I use my immersion blender), whirl the cooked onions and peppers with the the water or stock and sour cream. Don't over process - small pieces of pepper should remain. Add salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with cilantro and crumbled tortilla chips, if you wish.

Variation: omit the cumin, coriander, and cayenne. Add 1/3 cup chopped fresh dill when you are blending the ingredients together. Serve with croutons, if you wish.

Bread Pudding

I love bread pudding. What can I say? It's just old bread, soggy with milk and butter and eggs - but goodness gracious, is it delicious. Sometimes it pops up on restaurant menus, and they usually add chocolate or liquor or fruit or caramel or some combination thereof. I've tried some of those versions, and I've enjoyed them tremendously, but so far, I've always made mine plain (nothing flashier than some vanilla extract in the recipe), and sometimes I serve it with maple syrup. Especially if I'm eating the leftovers for breakfast.

In case you are wondering what kind of bread to use, here's my approach: as I'm consuming bread loaves (and in my case, they happen to be delicious bread loaves from a local bakery, but any bread loaves will do), I don't eat the end pieces. Instead, I throw them in the freezer. Once I have about eight loaves worth of bread loaf heels, it's bread pudding time. The especially nice thing about this is that I go through bread loaves pretty slowly (I actually store them in the freezer as I eat them, since the nice local bakery opts not to add preservatives), and apparently after every eight loaves or so, I'm in the mood for bread pudding! I say this because I've never had too many bread bits accumulate, and any time I've wanted bread pudding, there's been a good stock stored away in the corner of the freezer, waiting to magically mix with the milk and eggs and butter and vanilla.

Bread pudding is best straight out of the oven, so I usually take the bread out of the freezer before making dinner, and then make the bread pudding right after dinner, once the bread has thawed. That way, once people are feeling ready for dessert, it is freshly baked! Here's the recipe that I use, which is more straightforward than any I've found in my various cookbooks. It's the recipe my mom uses, which is probably why I like it so much:

Bread Pudding

Makes 4 servings

Preheat your oven to 325, and butter a baking dish (I use an 8x8 Pyrex).

On low heat, warm up 2 cups of milk and melt 1/4 cup of butter. Remove from the heat and let this cool off a bit.

Tear up your bread into pieces roughly the size of dice, until you've got 2 generous cups of bread hunks. (If you are using frozen bread as I suggested, be sure to thaw it first - an hour or so on the counter works fine).

Toss the bread into the baking dish - it should be about an inch deep, but this isn't a fine science. Pour the now somewhat cooled off milk and butter mixture over the top. Let that sit while you mix together:

1/2 cup sugar

2 eggs, slightly beaten

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla

Stir this mixture into the bread and milk combination. Bake for an hour. Enjoy!

Fresh Corn Pesto!

I am the very lucky recipient of a gift subscription to bon appetit, courtesy of my generous and lovely sister! The August issue featured lots of recipes for creative uses of corn, tomatoes, and zucchini. Some seemed a little too creative (Tomato Tarte Tatin, for example, which involves sugar, vanilla, and puff pastry)... and some a little too labor intensive (like the Shaved Zucchini Salad, which requires turning two pounds of zucchini into ribbons with a vegetable peeler)... but the Fresh Corn Pesto looked reasonably straightforward, I had fresh corn on hand from the CSA box, bacon was on the ingredient list, and the recommended vehicle for the recipe was pasta. I figured I couldn't really go wrong. Besides, my immersion blender (also courtesy of Elspeth) has an attachment that is just perfect for any pesto-like creations.

Happily, my bowl of Fresh Corn Pesto, served on pasta, looked nearly identical to what is pictured in the magazine - and tasted delicious, too! I took the leftovers for lunch the next day and they heated up in the microwave just fine.

Tagliatelle with Fresh Corn Pesto (serves 6)

* I cut the recipe in half, and served it on fettucine.

4 bacon slices, cut lengthwise in half, then crosswise into 1/2-inch pieces

4 cups fresh corn kernels (cut from about 6 large ears)

1 large garlic clove, minced

1 1/4 tsp coarse kosher salt

3/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese plus extra for serving

1/3 cup pine nuts, toasted

1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil

8 ounces tagliatelle or fettucine

3/4 cup coarsely torn fresh basil leaves, divided

Cook bacon in large skillet over medium heat until crisp and brown, stirring often. Using slotted spoon, transfer to paper towels to drain. Pour off all but 1 Tbsp drippings from skillet. Add corn, garlic, salt and pepper to drippings in skillet. Saute over medium high heat until corn is tender but not brown, about 4 minutes. Transfer 1 1/2 cups corn kernels to small bowl and reserve. Scrape remaining corn mixture into processor. Add 1/2 cup Parmesan and pine nuts. With machine running, add olive oil through feed tube and blend until pesto is almost smooth. Set pesto aside.

Cook pasta in large pot of boiling salted water until just tender but still firm to bite, stirring occasionally. Drain, reserving 1 1/2 cups pasta cooking liquid. Return pasta to pot. Add corn pesto, reserved corn kernels, and 1/2 cup basil leaves. Toss pasta mixture over medium heat until warmed through, adding reserved pasta cooking liquid by 1/4 cupfuls to thin to desired consistency, 2 to 3 miutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Transfer pasta to large shallow bowl. Sprinkle with remaining 1/4 cup basil leaves and reserved bacon. Serve pasta, passing additional grated Parmesan alongside.

Garlic Scape Pesto

I must start with an apology. This recipe is out of season, and you will not be able to find even one garlic scape again until June, which is nearly a year from now. But when you do - when you see them, in all their twisty, curly, fabulous glory, perhaps you'll remember that you DO know what to do with them, and that a quick visit back to this blog post will remind you. Or, if you are tremendously well organized, you could print this all out now, and save it in your "recipes to try in June 2011" folder. In the case that you have such a system in place.

Last year, there were garlic scapes in my CSA box. I must admit that I found them later in the summer (maybe around now, even, late August or so), all sad and dead and smushy on the bottom of my vegetable drawer. This year, when the garlic scapes arrived, I benefited from (believe it or not) my somewhat recent affiliation with the world of twitter. That's a separate topic entirely, but for our purposes let's just say that twitter is an online service that allows people to quickly and easily share information with one another. And in this case, it allowed the bloggers over at Serious Eats to share this brilliant blog post with me, in very timely fashion:The Crisper Whisperer: Seven Things to do with Garlic Scapes.

I was intrigued by the concept of garlic scape pesto, particularly when it was presented with such enthusiasm: Far and away my favorite use for garlic scapes is pesto, either straight-up or mixed with herbs like basil and dill. Pesto showcases raw scapes in all their glory.

I stuck to the recipe very precisely, and I followed her suggestion to freeze it in small batches, to enjoy through the winter... but it's so delicious that I have already used one of the frozen rations.So far, I've been eating it on cheese tortellini, and that has worked out quite well.

Garlic Scape Pesto

Blend together:

1/4 cup toasted pine nuts

3/4 cups coarsely chopped garlic scapes (or 1/2 and 1/2 with basil or dill)

juice and zest of 1/2 lemon

1/2 tsp salt

freshly ground pepper

Blend into that mixture:

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

Mix with a generous amount of freshly grated parmesan and stir directly into hot pasta. I divided this batch into four smaller batches, and froze three of them. Keep in mind that the parmesan should be added as you stir it into the hot pasta - which is to say that it shouldn't be mixed into the pesto before freezing.

Coleslaw

In my experience, coleslaw is often kind of soggy, dripping in mayonnaise. Sometimes it is even sweet, which, to me, seems kind of inappropriate for cabbage and carrots. Well, as the CSA has a habit of doing, it motivated me to take a nice fresh look at these ideas, because, frankly, I have cabbage and carrots coming out my ears.

Happily, Vegetable Love came through in the nick of time, providing a fresh dressing with a bite, which just barely skims across the surface of the many crispy bits of vegetables that it resides with in the bowl so nicely. I made this recipe earlier this summer, and just realized that I was actually craving it again! Round two has come out just as delightfully as round one, did.

Here's the recipe, halved, with my edits and alterations. I find this to be plenty of coleslaw for one person to consume without getting tired of it, but if you were attending a big picnic, I'd at least double it back to the original recipe (vegetable mix AND dressing).

Crisp Slaw (the recipe name is ever so appropriate here!)

Mix together:

green or red cabbage, cored and finely shredded (about 2 cups)

1 Tbsp salt

1/2 medium red onion, thinly sliced

1-3 carrots, peeled and grated (about 1/2 cup)

Combine and add:

1 Tbsp cider vinegar

1/4 cup mayonnaise

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp salt

freshly ground black pepper, to taste

1/4 tsp celery seeds

1/8 tsp mustard seeds

Refrigerate for at least an hour before serving - the leftovers get more flavorful with time, and the salad lasts just fine up to about a week.

Tomato Soup!

Consider this: it is mid-August, and everyone has too many tomatoes. If you know even one single person with a tiny bit of yard, or even a patio or a window sill wide enough for a tomato plant, they are currently trying with all their might to deposit at least a dozen tomatoes on you. They'll have a dozen more tomorrow. And the next day.

On Sunday, I received some tomatoes and put them in a bowl on my kitchen counter. On Monday, at work, there was a large bowl of tomatoes up for grabs (I passed on by them). On Monday night, I realized that the tomatoes on my counter were splitting, and not long for this world. I grabbed my absolutely reliable soup cookbook* from the shelf, and identified a recipe that looked straightforward and as though it would use up a pretty big pile of tomatoes. It called for three pounds, and I went ahead and assumed that was the amount I had in front of me (three moderately sized romas and four giant round something-or-others, bursting at the edges).

Here's where things really get good - I was able to parboil and peel the tomatoes immediately, and store them in the refrigerator until tonight (a full 48 hours later), when I got home at 9:15, hungry for tomato soup. I dumped the tomatoes and broth into a pan, brought it to boil, simmered for 10 minutes, stirred in 4 more ingredients, simmered for two minutes, plunged the absolutely genius immersion blender into the hot soup, and ate it. Immediately. It is absolutely delicious.

Furthermore, I suspect it will freeze very well. Which is good, because I plan to make a few more batches. One for each time I am inundated with must-eat-or-cook-immediately tomatoes.

Fresh Tomato Soup

3 lbs of ripe tomatoes (I eyeballed this, as noted above)

1 2/3 cup chicken or vegetable stock (I used the full can - 2 cups - of low sodium chicken broth)

3 Tbsp sun-dried tomato paste (I had a jar of sun-dried tomatoes in my fridge. I pureed 5 or 6)

2-3 Tbsp balsamic vinegar

2-3 tsp sugar

small handful of fresh basil leaves (I tossed in a few pinches of dried basil)

salt and ground black pepper

Cut a cross into the base of each tomato, and plunge into boiling water for 30 second

s. Refresh in cold water, peel off the skins, and quarter the tomatoes. (This took me all of 10 minutes, and then I stuck them in the refrigerator for 48 hours, until I had time to make and eat soup).

Put the tomatoes in a large pan and pour the broth over them. Bring just to the boil, reduce the heat, cover and simmer gently for 10 minutes until the tomatoes are pulpy.

Stir in the tomato puree, vinegar, sugar and basil. Season with salt and pepper, then cook gently, stirring, for 2 minutes. Process the soup in a blender or food processor, then return to a clean pan and reheat gently. Serve immediately.

I ate mine with a dollop of sour cream (naturally) and a grilled cheese sandwich featurin

g the odds and ends of some pepperjack that I found in my refrigerator. (I haven't done an official grocery store trip since the road trip last week).

*A note about cookbooks. This recipe is from a giant hard-cover cookbook called Best-Ever Soups by Anne Sheasby, which is just bursting with color photographs. It was in the $5 rack at Borders about five years ago, and I have made a dozen recipes out of it, each with great success. I love it. It should be noted that based on this experience, I snapped up a giant paperback cookbook last year (also in the $5 rack at Borders) called The Essential Pasta Cookbook (with no author, I now see), similarly bursting with color photographs. I have made two recipes from it, and both were tremendously lacking, both in direction and in result. It really is hard to tell a book by its cover. Or even by a quick scan of its recipes, it turns out.

A Meal to Follow a Road Trip

As some of you may know, Elspeth and I just went on a fabulous road trip. I flew to Seattle, we rented a car, and we drove back to Minnesota, meandering through Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, the Black Hills, and the Badlands (also a National Park) along the way. We slept in a tent all but one night (we splurged on a bed and breakfast in Douglas, Wyoming - which may, as it happens, have the saddest downtown in the western United States), and not even one bear tried to eat us. Growing up in Maine, I suspect we didn't imagine that in 2010, driving between the two cities that we feel so comfortable in would involve seeing most of Washington, some of Idaho and Montana, most of Wyoming and South Dakota, and a pretty serious chunk of Minnesota, as well. There are a lot of mountains along the way, and deserts, too. There are cowboys and rodeos and some rolling plant that may have been tumbleweed. There are some particularly grand rivers, and a whole lot of empty fields. I highly recommend the route that we took (which was cleverly planned, down to the very last detail, by Elspeth!).

We ate well along the way (Elspeth brought along homemade chili, and pasta, and risotto(!!) for campsite dinners), and our only fast food stop was a "lunch supplement" as we called it, at an Arby's in central Wyoming on Thursday. In South Dakota on Saturday morning, we ate sourdough pancakes from a recipe that claimed to use a sourdough starter from frontier times, "over a hundred years ago"! All the same, when we arrived in Saint Paul on Saturday night, we were hungry. We swung by the Seward Co-op to get a few essentials, and when we got home, I whipped up a quick dinner. Tortellini (cheese-filled, from the grocery store freezer), with garlic scape pesto (homemade, and stored in my freezer... I'll have to blog about that recipe later), and lots of shredded parmesan stirred in.

What we really wanted, though, after driving 2500+ hours in 6 days, was a salad.

Fresh greens, with an heirloom tomato sliced on top, dressed with an easy and delicious recipe - it's one I wrote down a few years ago from that Everyday Italian show on the Food Network, and as you can see here, I wrote it on cute recipe cards that Elspeth decorated for me as a gift one year for Christmas. As you can also see here, I make this dressing often enough that there's a smudge on the recipe card!

In case you can't quite see it: that is 4 Tbsp of white vinegar, 2 Tbsp of dijon mustard, 2/3 cup of olive oil, and 1 tsp oregano. In this case, I put in a pinch of dried oregano and a pinch of dried basil. And it's true - the recipe makes plenty of dressing. I have a small jar of it in the refrigerator now, which will last through the week!