St. Louis Eats and Drinks

Mac and Cheese Bites

Now, where was I before the burst of holiday theatre interrrupted me? Oh, yes. Party food.

Let me backtrack a little. I loved my mother’s macaroni and cheese when I was a kid. It was the only vegetarian entree ever served at home, long slithery hollow macaroni noodles sliding through what began as a white sauce, what we’d now call a bechamel, and then American cheese being torn apart and stirred in to melt. Prepared in a black cast iron skillet, the contrast was a handsome thing. It soon became my job to tear and stir in the cheese, and how much fun it was to watch the cheese melt and marbleize into the sauce. It was very cheesy, the macaroni several miles past al dente, the whole thing ultra-comfort food. I began to see Kraft’s blue boxes as a young and very impoverished newlywed, and that worked, too.

It wasn’t until some time later that I realized most people baked their homemade mac and cheese. And the problem I had with most of what I tried was that it wasn’t sufficiently cheesy. The formerly-picky eater still had her standards, you know.

I was tasked with coming up with finger foods for the baby shower for my granddaughter.. Many of the attendees were fairly conservative eaters, so that limited my usual instincts. (And it had to survive a day-long car trip.) But I came across this, which is from Leite’s Culinaria. It’s macaroni and cheese bites, and I was quite happy with the results. So were the conservative eaters. And the preggo one got a good bit of calcium in her. Furthermore, they freeze amazingly well. I let them come to room temperature, where they taste fine, and then decided to take advantage of an oven that was in use and opted to warm them slightly, and that worked, too.

You do need a mini-muffin pan for these. I got 18 out of one batch of these using small elbow pasta, De Cecco elbows No 81. If all you have is a 12-muffin pan, you can do it in two batches.

MAC & CHEESE CANAPES

dried breadcrumbs (recipe says optional but I used them)

¼ lb.(4 ounces by weight) small pasta like ditalini or small elbows

1 Tbs. butter plus more for buttering the pan

1 Tbs. flour

1/3 c. warmed milk

2 oz. sharp cheddar cheese, grated

2 oz. Gruyere cheese, grated

1 large egg yolk, room temperature

1 Tbs. heavy cream – I used Greek yogurt in one batch with no problems

1 tsp. dry mustard like Colemans, or a generous tablespoon of Dijon

(optional: A shot or two of hot sauce like Cholula – this won’t be hot but just punch the flavors up a little. I used it in each batch.)

 

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Butter the muffin tin holes very well and crumb them. (This also shows up any spots you missed; don’t ignore that, because this cheese likes to stick.)

Cook the pasta in salted water until it’s barely al dente. Don’t be shocked, you want it quite firm. Drain it, rinse with cold water and set aside.

Melt the tablespoon of butter in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the flour, and cook, stirring constantly for 2 minutes or so, until it’s bubbling well and may even brown slightly. Remove from the heat momentarily and gradually stir in the warm milk. Keep stirring until the lumps are gone and return to the heat. Bring to a boil, continuing to stir. It will be quite thick. Drop the heat and simmer for another couple of minutes while you get the cheese nearby. Add the cheeses slowly by the handful, stirring each batch in until it melts. Remove from the heat, and don’t be surprised if there’s butterfat at the edge of the pan. Cheddar, unlike, say, American cheese, doesn’t melt gracefully. The sauce will be very, very thick. Mix the pasta into the sauce and stir well.

Stir together the egg yolk, the mustard, and cream. Add the optional hot sauce, and some salt and pepper if you like. Stir that into the pasta.

Spoon it into the muffin cups, pressing it in a little. Bake for 10-12 minutes until they’re bubbling and the tops are golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the pan for 5 minutes before turning them out of the pan.

Eat now, eat later. Yields anywhere from 16 to 24, according to Leite.

Cheese Stars

Here’s another one of the party recipes. This is from Hoppin’ John’s Lowcountry Cookin’, by John Martin Taylor. Cheese straws are a tradition in Southern entertaining, I’m told, and they go well with wine, beer, cocktails and other beverages. The usual way is to cut out long strips, and I can certainly see a pizza cutter coming into use here. (Think of one of those elegant old Charleston, SC, houses with a batch of these on a party table, the straws nestled in a silver christening cup.) Taylor calls them “cheese pigs” because he cuts out the dough with a small cookie cutter shaped like a pig. My pig cutter was large and ungainly, and the pumpkin didn’t do much better, so I went for one of my star-shaped cutters.

I made the dough in advance and froze it in two rolls after I made a small batch to check oven temperature. You can certainly refrigerate it and use it in a day or two. It’s a wonderful dough, cooperative and with a shortbread-like texture. The pieces don’t spread much during baking, and they keep for a couple of weeks, at least, in airtight tins.

The cheese will grate better if it’s cold. I grated it myself; sometimes those pre-grated products have other ingredients that can mess up recipes so I didn’t take the chance. It will quickly come to room temperature.

 

1/ 4 lb (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 lb sharp cheddar cheese, grated

1/ 2 tsp salt

1/ 4 tsp cayenne pepper

1/ 4 tsp hot red pepper flakes

1 3/ 4 c unbleached flour

 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. I lined my two large baking sheets with parchment, but almost none of these stuck.

Cream the butter, then blend in the cheese. Add the seasonings and then the flour. Dough will be thick. Flour your working surface and roll it out thin. Cut in strips or whatever shape you want.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, until golden. Remove to racks and store in airtight tins. Martin says “makes about 100”, but we have no idea how big his pigs are. But it’s enough for a party, with leftovers for your post-game analysis the next day.

Not the Same Old Stuffed Celery

It’s party season! I’m working on a new book, which will be out – I hope – this time next year. So I’m not going out to dine nearly so much, and I’m not going to theater nearly so much as I normally do. But family life goes on, and I recently returned from a food-laden run to southeast Georgia (pecan country!) where we fed 40 people or so for a baby shower. So I’m going to share some of those recipes with you.

I found this on the web – it’s in many places – and is certainly low-carbohydrate. Not my bag, but YMMV. Still, it tastes good, and is a nice change to the celery stuffed with pimiento cheese often found.

Please be sure everything in the stuffing is at room temperature. I put the dry ingredients in a small clean spice jar, kept the crumbled bacon and, in a separate little container, the bacon grease in the cooler as I drove, and it all worked well – I zapped the bacon grease briefly to liquefy it when I was putting the stuffing together at my daughter’s.

 

1 head of celery

1-8oz block of cream cheese, softened

1 cup chopped dill pickles – I used dill relish

1 Tbs of the juice

1/2 tsp salt

6 strips of bacon cooked until crisp and broken up into small pieces (or chopped before frying)

3 Tbsp of the bacon grease (can substitute mayonnaise, but why?)

3/4 tsp onion powder

1/2 tsp parsley – I used dried

3/4 tsp garlic powder

1/4 tsp dried or fresh dill

 

Cut off about an inch of the bottom of the head of celery. (Discard or wash and toss in freezer with other vegetable scraps for stock.) Wash the celery stalks. Set aside for the moment.

Mix together the cream cheese and the remainder of the ingredients. Mixture will be stiff. You may use a pastry tube to fill the celery, but it will need to have a wide-diameter nozzle. I went with a spoon.

Decide how long you want the pieces of celery to be. I recall a few folks who went for the dramatic whole-stalk thing when I was a kid, but four inches or less is a little more workable. We went for somewhere between an inch and a half and two inches, just because there was lots of finger food that was going to go on these plates. Stuff celery generously, and be prepared for non-stuffed-celery eaters to smile and snatch a few more pieces.

Yield: It’s up to you.

 

Not Exactly a Recipe....

Is this a recipe? Sort of. The New York Times food section’s newsletters often talk about no-recipe “recipes”, making suggestions about putting things together and encouraging folks to use their experience, even if it’s limited, and instinct to put together food. (To quote the late Benjamin Spock, MD, “You know more than you think you do.”) And so this is one of those semi-recipes, requiring shopping skills, perhaps, but not much in terms of measuring and technique. I made this for another of the trivia contests and it was more of a hit than a fancier dip I’d done another night.

This uses labna, the Middle Eastern spreadable yogurt cheese that is spelled and pronounced several different ways. I was going to make it myself by lining a sieve or colander with cheesecloth or a very clean cotton dishtowel and letting Greek yogurt drain overnight or even a couple of days. There are lots of recipes for this online, including one that suggests using a clean t-shirt to hold the yogurt, but I’d advise against that unless you want a dish tasting faintly of Bounce. (I don’t use fabric softener on dishtowels, finding they absorb water faster when they’re hung up to dry naturally) But there the labna was in Global Foods refrigerator case against the south wall, saving me time and not any more expensive than Fage, my preferred brand of Greek yogurt.

I was at Global to pick up some zatar, the Middle Eastern seasoning mix. I found at least three brands. If I were truly dedicated, I would have bought and tasted all of them. I didn’t. I’ve used Sadaf products before and been happy, so here’s what that looks like. The mixture traditionally includes thyme, sumac and sesame seeds; some variations have other things added. Sumac is slightly tart; this brand also has a little salt in it.

When I got home, I stirred the labna to loosen it a little and spread about half of it in the serving container – in this case, an elegant Tupperware box. I sprinkled some of the zatar over it. How much? Maybe ¾ of a teaspoon – just be sure to not dump it all in the middle, season the edges, too, so when people scoop there, they’ll have some. Spread the remainder of the labna on top. Swirl it elegantly, and sprinkle more of the zatar over this – maybe a little less than you used on the lower layer, but use your judgement. I dribbled over it some good olive oil I’d brought back from California on my last trip, closed the container and refrigerated it until I needed it.

That’s it. The reason I layered it is so that the dried herbs can pick up some moisture from the labna – it could be done at the last minute, but this was easier for me because of time, and that worked out well. I offered pita chips with it, but it would work well with vegetables, too.

It was delicious. The Potato Queen was eating it with a spoon.

A New Feta Dip

Five years ago or so I wrote about a feta dip – sour cream, feta cjeese, and green onions. This one is better, I think, despite the fact that I went against my own habit and used some leftover feta in the fridge that was not the wonderful Bulgarian stuff, just the remnants of what I’d gotten at Costco. This is considerably lower in calories than the first one, which used sour cream.

I splurged and got fresh oregano and chives. If I had to use dried oregano in it, I’d cut the amount of oregano to 1/3 the original quantity (thus 1 teaspoon here, finely crushed between my fingers before using) and make it a couple of days in advance to allow the dried herb to rehydrate. I don’t know if there are still frozen chives in supermarket cases anymore, but it’s a thought. I also had some Fage brand Greek yogurt on hand, the full fat, called Fage Total. Greek yogurt is thicker and creamier, even in the low-fat versions, and it’s perfect for this. But this is clearly better the day after it’s made when the molecules of oregano and chives have had a chance to mix and mingle like they were at a cocktail party. Made for vegetables, of course.

 

Yogurt-Feta Dip

½ pound (8 ounces) feta cheese, crumbled

1 c. plain yogurt

1 Tbs. lemon juice

3 Tbs. chopped fresh chives

1 Tbs. chopped fresh oregano

salt and pepper to taste if needed

 

Buzz the feta, yogurt and lemon juice in a food processor until smooth. (My less-expensive feta stayed a little grainy; not a big deal.) Add the chives and oregano, pulse again just to mix. Check for salt, which you may not need, considering how salty feta is, and pepper and re-mix if you decide to add them.

Makes about 2 cups.

Ermas

A couple of weeks ago, I offered a recipe for cookies called hermits here.And as I talked about in the recipe, I went ahead and tinkered with it. This version is named for my friend Mary's mother, who did a cookie with mincemeat in it. The result is more moist than the hermits, and a more complex flavor. It also makes the dough a little less stiff, thus easier to work with. 

I'd thought that I should drain the mincemeat, but the Crosse & Blackwell mincemeat in my pantry was so thick, like a jam, that there really wasn't any liquid to drip off. I also decided I wanted more fruit in the cookies, so I added additional raisins. And I slightly changed the technique for mixing to ensure that I had a more even distribution of fruit and less of a flour cloud rising from the mixer bowl. (A friend tells me that a dish towel or an aluminum foil tent around the edges of the mixer bowl help with that; I haven't tried those.)

Ascertaining when the cookies are done is...well, not tricky but hard to describe. The original recipe I began with said that they were done when they were firm. Does that mean hard? The first batch were definitely not firm at the longer end of the baking time in the original recipe. I let them go another 7 minutes, and even then, the outside of the cookies were firm-ish, but normal pressure left a dent. When they cooled, they were almost hard, but softened the next day. This time, because the batter was moister, I decided to go with almost the original time, the outer surface was dry but the same dent occurred. They were more moist and softer but kept equally well.

It calls for two large baking sheets. I used half-sheet pans, bigger than a 9x13 pan, and they were barely long enough. If you only have shorter pans, make six logs instead of four. But do line the pans. I have parchment, which they specify, I’d be willing to try aluminum foil or even waxed paper in a pinch.

Additionally, you might remember to grease the measuring cup for the molasses; it pours out more easily. And the extra sugar for sprinkling – if you have coarse sugar around, this is a nice place for it, or demerara sugar, which is also coarse. I found that it doesn’t hurt to bake one pan at a time, although I suggest waiting to do the final sugar sprinkle fairly close to putting them in the oven.

Interestingly, unlike the previous version, these were tasty the day of baking, a little like the soft molasses cookies Archway used to sell. And they stayed yummy.

 

                            ERMAS

3 ½ cups flour

½ tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. ground allspice

½ cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup molasses

3 eggs, room temperature

1 cup mincemeat

¼ cup raisins

Extra granulated sugar for sprinkling

 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and allspice. In an electric mixer, cream the butter and the sugar until fluffy. Add the molasses and beat well. Add the eggs, one by one until the mixture is smooth. It will look curdled, but that’s okay.

Turn off the mixer, and add roughly one-third of the flour mixture and prepare for the cloud. Turn the mixer on to the lowest speed and beat slowly until most of the flour is absorbed. Stop the mixer, scrape the sides, add another third of the flour and repeat the beating. Stop the mixer, scrape and add the mincemeat and the raisins, and return to the very low speed to mix in the fruit. Stop, scrape, being sure to get the bottom of the bowl, and add the last of the flour. Mix it in.

Spoon the dough onto the sheets in 4 log shapes, two on each sheet. (Or adjust if you have smaller sheets.) They suggest using an offset spatula dipped in water to pat them into shape. I just used my well-washed hands. Don’t worry about wetting it too much. Each (if you’re using the larger pans) no wider than 2 ½ inches and narrower is fine. They do spread on baking. Sprinkle each log generously with sugar.

Bake them for 25-30 minutes or until they are firm (but see above note) when pressed with a fingertip.

Transfer them on the paper to wire racks to cool. Cut them crossways – they say to wait until they’re cool; I cut them slightly warm and found it easier that way. Makes perhaps 40 cookies.

Bacon Potato Bites

We’re now getting into the party season and that brings up the frequent question – whether to others or our own internal dialogue – of what should I bring? The sweets are everywhere this time of year, but as much as I like to do pastry-type stuff, sometimes a change of pace is welcome. I found this on thekitchn.com, and immediately latched on, believing it would be a hit.

And it was. It holds well at room temperature, except for the dip, and seems, to judge from the folks around me, pretty irresistible. Bacon. Potatoes. Sour cream. Hot sauce. Life is good, no?

You do need thick-cut bacon for this, and make sure you have toothpicks on hand; you’ll need them to do the wrapping. Also be aware that all this bacon gives off a lot of fat, so a sheet pan is going to be tricky to handle. I used two standard 9x13 baking pans, and was glad I did.

Commenters talked about using sweet potatoes or autumn squash or even Tater Tots (which would eliminate potato prep entirely) instead of white potatoes, but you’re on your own there. And there’s no reason you couldn’t try something else in the sour cream instead of hot sauce – I used regular old Tabasco. I do think the suggestion of putting salt in the sour cream is superfluous; it’s bacon, for heaven’s sake. The original recipe asks for 1 ½ teaspoons of minced fresh rosemary. I substituted crushed dried rosemary instead.

 

BACON-WRAPPED POTATOES

1 pound small or medium red potatoes

2 ½ tsp. kosher salt (use less if it’s regular salt), divided

1 Tbs. olive oil

½ tsp. dried rosemary, crushed

freshly-ground black pepper

1 lb. thick-cut bacon

8 oz. sour cream (reduced fat is fine)

1-3 tsp. hot sauce, to taste

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and make sure you have a rack at the middle level.

Cut the potatoes in 1-inch cubes or slightly smaller. Don’t worry if the shape isn’t perfect, the scraps will work, too. Put them in a medium pan, cover with cold water, add 2 teaspoons of salt and bring to a boil. Once it begins to boil, cook only until fork-tender, perhaps 4 minutes. Drain and put in a large bowl. Add the remaining ½ teaspoon salt, the olive oil, the rosemary and shower with a generous amount of pepper before tossing the mixture to make sure each potato gets anointed with the mixture. You may prepare this beforehand if it’s easier.

Open the bacon and before separating it into strips, cut the mass of strips into thirds. Each third will wrap a piece of bacon. Pay attention to the bacon – one end will surely be fattier, the other end will be leaner and the middle third could be either one.

Wrap the bacon strips around the pieces of potato, securing with a toothpick. Space them an inch or two apart in the baking pan. If you, like me, are using two pans – and this makes about three dozen, so you probably will – life will be a little easier if you keep the leaner-baconed ones in one pan and the fattier-baconed ones in the other. The middle cut ones are your call.

Bake for 15 minutes. They won’t be done, but this is the time to flip each one over to attain maximum crispness. Return to the oven and check in another 15 minutes. Remove the ones that are sufficiently browned for your taste and put them on paper towels set over old newspapers so they can drain the last bit of grease. Return the rest to the oven for another 5 or even 10 minutes. You may want to check more frequently, which is okay, but remember, opening the oven frequently will lengthen the total cooking time.

While they’re baking, stir the hot sauce into the sour cream. Taste and see if it could benefit from more black pepper. You can always add salt after you try one of your creations when they cool off.

About 36 bites, and they’re just fine at room temperature.

Chocolate Rum Cake

Every once in a while a dessert comes along that smacks you in the face. Here’s one. It’s a one-layer French-style gateau, not a layer cake, dark, rich chocolate but not oversweet. It’s from Clare Ptak, a Chez Panisse alum who’s now baking in London. The recipe came out of Milk Street Magazine. It results in an incredibly moist cake, rather gooey in the center. It’s the sort of recipe that takes several bowls and other equipment, but the dishwashing is a small price to pay for this deliciousness

Ptak’s techniques are a little different than expected, the yolks are beaten for a while before they’re introduced to the chocolate, and the whites are not whipped to stiff peaks – you want soft peaks that bend very gently.

I used Ghirardelli 70% Chocolate, which can be found in supermarkets and for the dark rum, used Rhum Barbancourt, which is Haitian. Do not let the prunes turn you off. They’re a respected ingredient in French cooking, and, finely chopped, add texture and a flavor note that’s hard to identify but fits beautifully with the other ingredients.

It looks quite plain. It’s possible to shower some powdered sugar over it; when I needed to dress it up, I’ve squiggled whipped cream around the base and tumbled fresh raspberries in the middle. (Yes, aerosol whipped cream, I confess. I was contributing it to a party where I didn’t have access to whip it myself.) Using it with this cake is a good example of how whipped cream can actually cut richness.

 

9 Tbs. salted butter (1 of the tablespoons should be softened)

8 oz. pitted prunes, about 1 ½ cups, finely chopped

1/3 c. dark rum

1 Tbs. molasses

12 oz. bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped

6 large eggs, separated

1/3 c. plus 1/4 c. white sugar

1/2 tsp. kosher salt

 

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees with a rack in the middle position. Use the softened butter to coat the bottom and sides of an 8- or 9-inch springform pan.

In a container that’s microwave safe, like a glass measuring cup, combine the prunes rum and molasses. Microwave until the rum is bubbling, 45 to 60 seconds. Let sit for at least 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Gently melt the butter and chocolate. I do it very slowly in a microwave, with short bursts of heat punctuated by stirring. When it gets to a certain point that there is melted chocolate and butter with some lumps swimming in it, you may stop microwaving and just stir until the lumps melt. Ptak talks about using a metal bowl set over a pan of simmering water, melting the butter and then stirring in the chocolate until it’s melted. When it’s smooth, set it aside and proceed with the egg yolks.

In a large bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and 1/3 cup of sugar until the mixture is pale and glossy. (This took me about a minute, but I whisk slowly; YMMV.) Slowly add the melted chocolate mixture and whisk until smooth. Stir in the prune mixture.

Using a stand mixer with the whisk attachment (okay, I admit, I used a hand mixer, slower but easier to control), whip the egg whites and salt on medium-high until the mixture is light and foamy, perhaps another minute. With the mixer running, slowly sprinkle in the remaining ¼ cup of sugar and continue to whip until the whites are thick and glossy and hold those soft, bendy peaks. Don’t hesitate to stop and check; overbeating to the stiff-peak point doesn’t ruin it, but the texture won’t be as tender.

Whisk about a third of the whipped egg whites into the chocolate mixture to lighten it. It doesn’t have to be perfectly mixed. Gently fold in the remaining whites, using a rubber spatula, until the batter is marbled but not quite fully blended.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Smooth the top with a spatula if needed. Bake until the edges of the cake are firm and cracked, 35-40 minutes for the 9-inch pan, 40-45 minutes for the 8-inch pan. The center will be just set – but will jiggle if you shake the pan gently.

Cool the cake in the pan on a wire rack for at least 1 hour before serving. It will sink as it cools.

So rich it serves 12.

Thoughts on Visiting Clementine's Creamery

National Ice Cream Day was this past Sunday. Wise of them to do it on a Sunday, don’t you think? A Sunday afternoon stroll or drive? Maybe a post-prandial cone in the evening? Americana at its best, one of the universal experiences.

Clementine’s Creamery just opened its second location, on DeMun with the green park that’s part of Concordia Seminary’s grounds just across the street. It’s a very strollable neighborhood. I dropped by at an opening soiree to inspect the premises and, yes, have some ice cream.

They were pouring sparkling wine, but I wanted ice cream first. As I inspected the case and the sign on the wall behind it, a memory popped up. Unfortunately they were out of the blood orange sorbet I’d hoped for. Now, Clementine’s, if you weren’t aware, is known for its “naughty” flavors, meaning alcohol-laced, as well as its low overrun (not a lot of air whipped into it) and its careful selecting of ingredients it uses. They also do a lot of flavors for a general audience, but I asked for a dish with a single scoop of Old Fashioned ice cream.

The Old Fashioned has been around as a cocktail for more than a century. It’s a simple one. Bourbon or rye whiskey, sugar, bitters, perhaps a splash of carbonated water, and an orange garnish. Modern variations put the orange in with the muddling of the sugar and the bitters together. It was Bess Truman’s favorite pre-dinner drink, which is enough endorsement for me.

So I took the flute of sparkling wine, which was Wycliff Brut from California, and poured a little over and around the ice cream. Eureka! Just what I was hoping for.

This doesn’t seem to work as well with the milk-based ice creams, but I’d encourage experimentation with citrusy flavors and berry sorbets. It’s a caffeine-free version of the Italian affogato, which pairs vanilla ice cream with a shot of hot espresso.

What had flashed in my head was a post-theatre stop in New York at a spot across Broadway from Lincoln Center, Cafe Fiorello, where we had grapefruit granita with a sparkling wine, exquisite on a hot summer night.

It’s an easy dessert for an impromptu get-together, one I’m going to play around with more. You’re welcome

 

Clementine’s Creamery

1637 S. 18^th St., St. Louis

and

730 Demun Ave., Clayton

314-858-6100

www.clementinescreamery.com

Lemon Lemonies

It’s no secret that I like lemons. I did even before I acquired the last name in a previous marriage. Even as a kid, my love for all things tart extended to rhubarb and gooseberries. Lemon bars didn’t exist in that world, but if they had, I would’ve been right there.

I came across this recipe somewhere on the internet, via www.averiecooks.com. It’s not a lemon bar, it’s more like a brownie that isn’t brown. I first came to appreciate the combination of lemon and white chocolate (normally my least-favorite form of chocolate) one winter when Li-Lac Chocolate in Greenwich Village was dipping lemon slices in white chocolate. That seemed pretty strange but when I finally tasted one, cold from having been carried around New York City on a cold January day for a couple of hours, it was like eating crunchy lemonade.

You really don’t taste the chocolate here, but it contributes very much to the texture of the soft, chewy base. This is a very intensely-flavored sweet, like eating lemon drops. Cutting an 8” pan into 16 squares gives pieces that might even be too big. Next time I may go for 9 squares and cut each diagonally. The glaze is soft, and after these set up, it may well drift slowly down the side of each piece. That’s okay with me. It gives some indication of the sensuality of this sweet.

I can’t imagine using bottled lemon juice for this. Besides, you really need the lemons for the grated peel. I weighed the chocolate, in case you want to sub another type of white chocolate for the chocolate chips.

Now, about that glaze: It’s really the heart of this recipe; much of the lemon-ness of the dish is there. Anyone who’s made a powdered sugar glaze knows how tricky that balance of liquid and sugar is, to get it the consistency you want, whether it’s really wet or barely pourable. The directions given made something that, to me, was far too wet. So I cut back on the lemon juice, with the admonition that you can always more, a little at a time, to get things just right.

You’ll want to make this in advance, to give the glaze time to set up and sink into the base. I let the glazed bars sit overnight before I remove the bars and slice them.

 

LEMON LEMONIES

base:

¾ c. (6 oz.) white chocolate chips or equivalent

½ c. unsalted butter (1 stick), melted

2 large eggs, room temp, lightly beaten

¾ c. granulated sugar

¼ c. lemon juice

1 ¾ c. all-purpose flour

pinch salt

glaze:

2 c. confectioners sugar

about ¼ c. lemon juice and more as needed

about 1 tablespoon lemon zest

 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line an 8” baking pan with aluminum foil, making sure it comes all the way up over the sides because you’ll use it to lift the cookies. Feel free to fold it back or crumple it down. Spray with cooking spray.

In a large, microwave-safe bowl, melt the butter if you haven’t already, add the chocolate, and heat to melt. Do this gently; white chocolate is more temperamental than the darker stuff. Hit high power for 1 minute, stop and stir, and continue in 10- to 20-second bursts, stirring each time, until chocolate is smooth. It will not blend completely, but as long as the lumps are completely gone, you’ll be okay.

Let this cool a bit and add the sugar, eggs and lemon juice. Whisk until combined. (You don’t need a mixer for this.) Add the flour and salt, stir just until combined.

Turn out into the prepared pan. If you need to, smooth the top with a wet spatula, or just tip the pan around and drop it from a couple of inches onto the counter.

Bake for 27-28 minutes. A toothpick should come out clean, or with perhaps a few moist crumbs, but not with any batter on it. Set aside on a rack and make the glaze. Don’t wait until this is room temperature, just forge on ahead.

In a medium bowl, whisk the powdered sugar and ¼ c. lemon juice. It should be fairly thin, pourable rather than spreadable, so add more lemon juice as needed.

Pour it over the base, tipping the pan to make sure the base is covered. Sprinkle the lemon zest over the glaze. Set aside to cool uncovered for at least 2-3 hours. Overnight is better, but once it’s room temperature, cover it loosely.

Remove from pan, using the foil, and set on a cutting board. You’ll need a spatula to lift each bar off the foil after slicing. The glaze may well, as I said, drift down the side of some pieces.

They keep, airtight at room temp, for a week, or can be frozen for up to 6 months. (I’ve used a little cooking spray on the center of my plastic wrap for these, to keep the glaze from coming off when I unwrap them.)

Yield: As many pieces as you wish from an 8” square pan.

Cajun Sweet Potatoes

Like many small-town Midwesterners and Southerners, I grew up in a world of candied sweet potatoes. Marshmallows were a new-fangled poseur-type thing when they showed in the Eisenhower Administration, not that anyone ever knew that French word. I never saw a recipe for sweet potatoes; like dressing, it was something you, or your mother or your grandmother just made by ear, so to speak.

The story around this has to do with the holidays in 1985. My mother was dying. I’m an only child, I was raising children alone and working full-time plus some overtime. While my stepfather was a man of excellent appetite and my mother needed nutrition, I just couldn’t face doing the Full Monty of the traditional meal. I put together a meal from some Paul Prudhomme recipes in a food magazine: A pork roast, dirty rice, potato salad and sweet potatoes. Prudhomme used the phrase “flavors playing pinball in your mouth”. They did with that menu. But it wasn’t traditional and it offended my adolescent daughter so much she refused to come to the table.

Her brother and I ate, cleaned up, packaged things to take to my mother and stepfather, and the three of us headed out to them. Coming home, we were not yet out of the subdivision when the (formerly recalcitrant) daughter excitedly said, “Let’s go home and eat leftovers!”

I had been forgiven, and of all the things in that menu, this is the dish I’ve repeated most often. It contains an obscene amount of butter – I’ve halved it before but somehow it doesn’t taste as good. I upped it in scale and tweaked it a bit as I acquired matriarch status with the Pollack clan, who regarded Thanksgiving as their particularly greatest holiday. I’ve used juice oranges and navel oranges in this; navels slice more nicely but the thinner-skinned juicers make for a tastier peel, which candies in the cooking syrup.

 

1 lb. Butter

3 lbs. sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped

1 c. water

1 c. white sugar

1 c. dark brown sugar

2 oranges, skin washed, end slices discarded, sliced and seeded

1 lemon, skin washed, end slices discarded, sliced and seeded

2 sticks cinnamon

1 Tbs. Vanilla

¾ tsp ground mace

a pinch of salt

In a large saucepan or Dutch oven over high heat, mealt the butter. When it’s about half-melted add everything else. Stir, and bring to a full boil. If you’re nearby, you can cover it; otherwise I leave it open lest it boil over in my absence. Stir, then drop head and simmer covered for 20 minutes. Remove the lid and continue cooking until sweet potatoes are tender, perhaps another 20 minutes, but keep checking. The size of the potato pieces doesn’t matter, as long as they’re tender – some smaller ones will be softer than the large ones, which are the pieces by which I judge doneness.

Prudhomme advises to serve immediately, undrained, but it reheats well, and I do drain it quite a bit. Sometimes the butter, with its orange-cinnamon notes, turns out to be great on biscuits for tomorrow morning’s breakfast. He also says 2 pounds of sweet potatoes serves 10-12, but that must be part of a very large meal. This looks to me like it might serve 10 – but that, as always, just depends, doesn’t it?

Pumpkin Pudding

Here’s the pumpkin pudding recipe from Larry Forgione that I wrote about in a story about An American Place. I’ve gotten a couple of requests for it. This is part of a dinner menu I haul out when I’m feeding people whose palates are conservative. (A nice soup to start, then roast chicken and a potato gratin – you get the idea.)

These days, one always has to explain that the pumpkin needed below is not the pre-mixed pumpkin pie filling that’s now in cans, too. It’s just canned pumpkin, although one can substitute roasted and puree-it-yourself pumpkin. In my experience, that tends to be watery, though, so drain it carefully, using a coffee filter. And, yes, I know that what we buy as pumpkin probably is another kind of gourd than pumpkin. Fine with me, thanks.

This is pretty much the way the original recipe was written, but I use a casserole that’s smaller than the requested 9x13. That’s because it’s easier to find a pan for the water bath around the baking pudding, at least at my house. This makes a thicker dish, but since you’re scooping it rather than nicely cutting it in squares, it’s no big deal. Just bake it a little longer; I add about 10 minutes but YMMV.

While Larry wants it served warm, it’s pretty fine nibbled cold from the fridge the next day, even without any whipped cream. That cream, by the way, looks nicer if it’s just softly whipped, so it can languorously drift down the side of each serving. I like to add just a little brandy to it, the way you might vanilla, before beating.

 

 

1 ½ c. unsweetened pumpkin puree

2 ½ c. buttermilk

¾ c. granulated sugar plus 1 Tbs sugar later

½ c. brown sugar

5 Tbs. butter melted and slightly cooled

3 eggs (room temp), beaten

1 ½ c. flour

1 ½ tsp. baking soda

1 ½ tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. nutmeg

½ tsp. salt

Sweetened whipped cream, for serving

 

Make sure one rack in the oven is in the middle position. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Lightly butter a 9x13 inch baking dish and set aside. Find another, larger pan that can hold the baking dish – you’re making a water bath for it.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt.

In a large bowl beat together the pumpkin and buttermilk until smooth. Stir in ¾ cup of the granulated sugar, the brown sugar and 4 tablespoons of the melted butter. Add the eggs and mix until blended.

Add the dry ingredients to the pumpkin mixture a little at a time, whisking lightly but thoroughly after each addition. Pour the batter into the buttered dish and place that dish into the larger one. Add enough hot water to the outer pan to come about halfway up the side of the baking dish.

Bake for 15 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees and bake for 25-30 minutes longer. A toothpick inserted in the center should come out clean.

Remove the pudding from the oven, brush with the remaining melted butter and evenly sprinkle the remaining tablespoon of granulated sugar over it. Serve the pudding warm, with whipped cream on the side.

Serves 6-8, but as always, you never know, do you?

Mediterranean Chicken Salad

Quickly – before tomato season is over, make this salad. It’s gorgeous, much of it is make-ahead, and it’s way not the mayonnaise-type chicken salad that so often induces stultifying boredom. I found it in the old, classic Silver Palate Cookbook and did a little adjusting.

While I’m buying the tomatoes, I usually can pick out my green beans, too. I prefer the not-too-fat ones, but I’d rather have local regular beans than prepackaged haricots verts, so use your judgment, as is the case with so many of these things. You may use boned or bone-in chicken breasts, whatever is available. I also prefer to cook the chicken breasts in chicken broth; I then strain the remaining liquid and freeze it (marking it DOUBLE STRENGTH CHX BROTH) and reuse it for the next poach, and repeat the process, as it gets more flavorful each time. Sometimes the frozen broth gets used for a particularly succulent soup or risotto. Then the process starts again.

I’ve made this the day before, layering it in a container, seasoned chicken, then olives and capers and then the green beans. When it was time to eat, I shook it out into a bowl, added the just-cut-up tomatoes and lemon juice, tossed lightly, checked and adjusted the seasoning, and went at it. It certainly doesn’t need to be served cold. Unfortunately it was scarfed down so quickly I couldn’t get photos.

 

Chicken breasts – about 3 pounds or so

chicken broth or lightly salted water in which to poach them

1/3 c. olive oil

1 ½ tsp. dried oregano

¾ c. black olives, preferably Greek or Nicoise

2  heaping Tbs. capers

¼ lb. green beans

juice of 1 lemon

2 medium or large tomatoes, cut in wedges or large chunks

salt and pepper

 

Bring the poaching liquid of your choice to a boil. Add the chicken breasts, return to the boil, drop the heat to a simmer, partially cover the pan, and cook for 20 minutes, more for larger breasts, less for smaller. Remove from heat and set the pan, breasts and all, aside, covered, until it cools. When cool, remove the chicken from the liquid. Remove skin and bones if necessary, and tear chicken into bite-sized pieces. Cover the pieces with the olive oil. Rub the oregano between your fingers or in the palm of your hand and add it to the chicken. Stir to make sure the seasoned olive oil is on each piece of chicken and set aside for an hour. Make sure to save your cooking liquid if you’re planning to keep it.

While waiting, string the beans, and cut in smaller pieces if desired. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Prepare an ice water bath – I use a bowl with a half-dozen or so ice cubes in the water. Add the green beans and cook to desired tenderness. I like a little body to them, but not crunchy, so it seems to run about 5-6 minutes for medium-thickness beans. The way to check is to grab one, run it under cold water (or use the ice bath!) and bite. When ready, scoop them out of the boiling water and add them immediately to the ice bath so that they cool. Drain them when cool. If using them immediately, I pat them with a paper towel to dry somewhat.

Into the salad bowl, whether now or later, will go the beans, the chicken and its oregano-scented oil, the olives and the capers. Add the tomatoes and lemon juice if you’re serving it now, and mix. I do salt and pepper this moderately, but your taste is the best guide.

Serves 4 to 6, but as always, that just depends.

Ginger-Molasses Cookies

Cookie time again. I brought a batch of these with me when I worked at the polls Tuesday. I suppose there are folks who don’t like this sort of dark, chewy, spicy cookie, but there aren’t many. The original recipe, which I got out of the Back in the Day Cookbook from a few years ago made them with a quarter-cup of dough each, which made for immense cookies that spread more than the suggested 2 inches between each bit of unbaked dough would allow. I’ve changed the recipe to reflect how smaller ones can be managed.

The crowning touch is the turbinado sugar in which the dough is rolled before going onto the baking sheets. It’s great to make the crusty edges and exterior. I suppose you could use coarse sugar for that step, but I can’t guarantee it, and now that I have turbinado on hand, I may try using it for other cookies, like peanut butter.

The bad news is, it does dirty up several bowls; the good news is, it’s ingredients that, except for the turbinado, I pretty much always have on hand. When you measure your molasses, grease your measuring cup first. It’ll save you having to wait for the slow-as molasses drip out, or having to rubber-spatula it out.

 

MOLASSES-GINGER COOKIES

2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

1 ½ tsp. baking soda

2 tsp. ground cinnamon

1 ½ tsp. ground cloves

1 tsp. fine sea salt

½ c. vegetable shortening (like Crisco) room temperature

6 Tbs. butter, room temperature

1 ½ c. packed light brown sugar

2 large eggs, room temperature

1/3 c. dark molasses

2 tsp. ground ginger

1 c. turbinado sugar

 

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves and salt. Set aside.

If you’re using a stand mixer, use the paddle attachment, or just in a large bowl, use a handheld mixer, to beat the shortening, butter and brown sugar together on medium speed until smooth, creamy and light in color, 3 to 5 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Scrape down as needed, including after the last egg. Add the molasses and ginger, and mix on low for 1 minute. Add the flour mixture in thirds – the original recipe calls for doing this as the mixer is running, but I suspect if you stop the mixer, sprinkle the flour all over the batter and re-start the mixer slowly, it would work. Just mix until thoroughly incorporated, no more than 2 minutes.

Transfer the dough to another bowl if necessary so you can refrigerate it, and finish mixing with a rubber spatula to make sure no bits of flour or butter are on the bottom of the bowl. Cover and chill for at least 1 hour. (The dough can be refrigerated if wrapped well for up to 4 days.)

Position a rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees. Line your cookie sheets with parchment. This is a sticky dough and the cookies come out very soft.

Put the turbinado sugar in a small bowl. I ended up using about a rounded tablespoon of dough for my optimal size cookie. Whatever size you choose, roll it into a rough ball and then roll in the sugar to coat completely. Space well apart on the baking sheet, flatten slightly and sprinkle on a little more of the turbinado sugar.

Bake one sheet at a time. This is one recipe that you really should follow those instructions to turn the pan around halfway through the baking time. The big quarter-cup ones should go for 15-18 minutes, and be puffy. (The recipe says they should be golden brown. They go in the oven brown; golden is impossible to discern, I find.) The ones I made went 13-15 minutes, and I might leave them in a little longer the next time.

Slide them, on the parchment, onto wire racks and let cool completely. The cookies will be soft in the middle and slightly crunchy on the edges. I do find that overnighting them in a cookie tin softens the edges, and of course the flavors evolve, too.

Yield? Your call.

A Better Gingerbread

Do you own a Microplane? That’s the long, file-looking thing that grates all sorts of stuff. I bought one when they first came out and it’s one of the few gizmo-ish things I won’t give up. It’s not essential to make this gingerbread, but it surely does help. And it’s far more efficient than the porcelain ginger grater I bought at a high-end kitchen shop.

The gingerbread itself is near-miraculous. It’s from my very beat-up and much loved Cafe Beaujolais Cookbook, and it uses fresh ginger. The first time I made it, I accidentally doubled the ginger, using 4 ounces instead of the 2 ounces the recipe called for. It’s quite zingy that way, but for me, it’s what lifts it head and shoulders above others.

If you haven’t worked with fresh ginger, or if you haven’t worked with it this way, let’s discuss it a little. The easiest way to peel fresh ginger, except for the callused bits, is just to scrape it with a teaspoon. I lay the Microplane across a shallow bowl and grate the ginger into the bowl. A box grater’s smallest holes can be used, but takes a lot longer and is the very devil to clean. The Microplane also does far better with the fibers of fresh ginger, although if they hang around and get in your way, a snip with your kitchen scissors is the easiest way to deal with them. Save the ginger juices, too, and add them in; it’s all good. I’ve made it with 2 ounces, and I prefer the higher amount.

I’ve also used the bottled ginger that can be found at places like Global Foods Market, in a weight-equivalent amount, about a quarter cup, and find it is less gingery than the grated-on-the-spot sort. If you’re in a hurry, it’ll do, but I encourage you to try the real stuff. The Microplane is also great for grating garlic, hard cheese, dried bread for crumbs, lots of things.

And as a little side note, when you’re greasing your baking pan, also grease the quarter-cup measure for the molasses (I use the dark variety) and the corn syrup. (Are you one of those people who automatically call it Karo syrup? I am.) That way it’ll pour out cleanly and save you scraping the cup.

 

½ c. butter, room temperature

½ c. dark brown sugar

¼ c. molasses

¼ c. dark (Karo) corn syrup

1 egg, beaten

¼ tsp. salt

1 ½ c. flour

1 tsp. baking soda

½ c. buttermilk, room temperature

2 to 4 ounce knob of fresh ginger, peeled and grated (see above)

Grease an 8-inch square pan and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a bowl, whisk together the flour and baking soda and set aside. Cream together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the molasses, corn syrup, egg and salt, and beat until smooth. Add half the flour-baking soda mixture (you don’t have to be obsessive about the exact amount), stir until it’s mixed in, add half the buttermilk and mix it in. Repeat with the remaining flour and buttermilk. Stir in the ginger until it’s well-distributed.

Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 40-45 minutes until a toothpick or other cake tester comes out clean.

Serves 9-16, depending on how you cut it. Or maybe just four of you. And, yes, it freezes well.

Vaguely Caesarian Dip

Another addition to my collection of things to go with crudites, yes. I don't think this is quite as good with corn or potato chips, although pita chips might do. It all began with a recipe on the net that offered a Caesar salad dressing made with smoked oysters.

Smoked oysters are pretty intense. I like oysters and I like smoked, but on their own, they're heavy going. Still, this sounded intriguing and I bookmarked it. When a trivia night came up, it seemed like the thing to do.

No sense in making a mayonnaise from scratch for such a thing, despite the recipe beginning with that - although, sneakily, they didn't mention that that's what you were doing when you tossed egg yolks and olive oil and lemon into a processor or blender. So I started with low-fat mayo and went from there, using what I had around.

It tastes rather like taramosalata, salty-fishy. Fine for fiends like me, but I did stir in the yogurt after I took the original version out of the fridge the next morning and tasted it. And it would be swell with about any smoked fish. I may try sardines next.

All these measurements except the Worcestershire sauce are approximate, and you can wing it like I did. We're not making pie crust here, after all.

 

1 large garlic clove

1 c. low-fat mayonnaise

2 Tbs. lemon juice

1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce

1 can smoked oysters, including liquid from the can

1/4 tsp. black pepper

1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt, approximate

 

With the blade running, drop the garlic clove in a food processor and let the garlic get chopped. Stop the machine and dump in the mayo, lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce. Whir the mixture, scrape down the sides and give it another run. Add the oysters and their liquid and the black pepper. Process again, scraping down as necessary. (My new machine is larger than my old one and smaller amounts like this seem to take more scraping.)

At this point, I prefer to remove the mixture to a medium bowl. Taste it and see how much, if any, you want to lighten the texture or the taste - it will be fairly stiff. Stir in as much yogurt as you like. Refrigerate, of course.

As written, yields about 2 cups.

Milk Punch

 One of the great brunch traditions in New Orleans, a great brunch town, is the eye-opener. That's an alcoholic drink served before or with the meal. Beyond the Bloody Mary and the mimosa, and far more local in character, is milk punch. Gentle and sippable, it's a welcoming drink, one of my favorites. But I'd never made it at home and finally tracked down and then adapted a recipe for it.

Some people make it with brandy, but I find I prefer bourbon; it's your call. It really is better with at least a little half-and-half in it, so use skim for about half your milky ingredient and half-and-half for the other half - if that makes sense. I find it's better to shake it with one batch of ice and then strain it over fresh cubes - somehow, it keeps things colder.

Another fillip that's optional is fresh nutmeg. You can use the pre-ground, of course. But it's easy to buy whole nutmegs at Penzey's or elsewhere. And one of the offspring gave me, not knowing exactly what it was, a wee grater that is perfect for grating it. Nutmegs are very hard, so it takes a little pressure to get things moving.

But here is the recipe for one serving.

 

1 1/2 ounces (3 Tbs.) bourbon (or brandy)

a dribble of vanilla - maybe 1/8 tsp.

1/2 cup milk and/or half-and-half (see above)

2 Tbs. powdered sugar

Ice

Nutmeg

 

In a shaker or other leak-proof container, put alcohol, vanilla, milk mixture and powdered sugar wtih some ice cubes or crushed ice. Close container and shake hard for about 30 seconds - you want some froth on there.

Strain over fresh ice in a glass. Top with nutmeg, freshly grated or otherwise.

This can be easily scaled up for a quantity and simple syrup can be substituted for the powdered sugar, using a teaspoonful of syrup for every tablespoonful of powdered sugar.  

Eating On the Eve, and a Recipe

Christmas just isn’t the same.

Well, of course it isn’t. You’re not the same, your family isn’t the same, your circumstances aren’t the same. The raggedy old knit stocking, faded and bedrabbled and loved, that hung from the front door knob - no fireplace at your house - for all the years of your childhood has finally disappeared, a victim of too many household moves. You’re the dad or mom, now, who tries to bake cookies while the rest of the family watches yet another showing of Rudolph and the Elf Who Would Be A Dentist.

Christmas is so deeply embedded in us as children that we becomes hard for us to see it any other way than we saw it then, just as it’s hard for us to see our parents as individuals rather than through the us-as-children experience. But evolve it does. I remember, as a child, being shocked that some families opened gifts Christmas Eve. How on earth could Santa get them there before bedtime? Even in my post-Santa years, I decided that it would take the fun out of Christmas morning. So we were a Christmas Day-opening family for many, many years.

During those years, I grew up and became a single mom. The Christmas logistics multiplied. Christmas morning I would drive the kids over the river and through the countryside to their father’s, return to St. Louis and work an evening shift at the hospital. Finally my pragmatic firstborn said, “I know this is heresy, but why don’t we open our gifts Christmas Eve? Wouldn’t it be easier? We could sleep later, too.” The measure passed by a decisive margin.

And so Christmas Eve, which had always been to me, even as an adult, the essence of suspense and drama and a little magic, came into its own for us.

It evolved into a day-long celebration, and to my delight, gifts were only a minor part of things. Food, naturally, played a major role. Originally I had planned Christmas dinner as an evening meal. It immediately became obvious, though, that there would have to be food available throughout the day. My son’s friends, home from the rigors of academia, and my daughter’s, full of the appetites of mid-adolescence, came through at intervals. My own pals were dropping things off as they left town to drive home to their parents or in-laws.

You can’t not offer people something to eat on Christmas Eve, after all. Well, I suppose some people could, but I certainly couldn’t, not when there were two kinds of pie around and dinner a good eight hours away. And we were off on what would suddenly become a running, day- and evening-long open house in the big living-dining-cooking room that was our downstairs, a space made for such an event.

Pies were sliced, fresh coffee was - constantly - being made, the turkey originally planned for dinner, never a small one, contributed to sandwiches which flew out of the kitchen next to potato salad. (Potato salad for the holidays was the result of ten years’ living in pan-cultural Laclede Town.)

From year to year, the menu changed only slightly. A discount-store punchbowl was bought to serve a strange, silly punch my daughter recalled from years past, festive-looking and unsweet enough to be tolerated by adults.. Occasionally we substituted a ham for the turkey and dressing when we felt the urge. The actual dinner hour, when whoever was around actually sat down at the properly-set-by-then table brought out the cranberries and sweet potatoes and spinach casserole. One year, because of various schedules, we skipped the dinner-type foods altogether and had particularly festive sandwiches. The spectacular chicken salad, I recall, was a particular hit with my daughter’s three, yes, three South American swains.

As darkness fell, the company crept away. Occasionally one of the kids would disappear to a friend’s for a while, something I once might have found distressing. But the day would have been so good, it mellowed us all. By mid-evening, lost sheep always returned. I would make a rather brief,Calvin Trillinesque state-of-the-family speech and we would open gifts in a very leisurely fashion.

And after the troops had retreated upstairs, I would survey the lighted tree, think about the smiling people I had fed that day, and I would be an extremely satisfied person.

 

You need no recipe for the punch, which still takes me back to wedding receptions in Baptist churches’ educational buildings. I make it with ginger ale and lime sherbet, but I’ve seen it made with grape soda and vanilla ice cream and other variations to produce various pastel colors matching the bridesmaids. Scoops or one big block of sherbet goes into the punch bowl and a cold carbonated beverage of choice is poured over it. Stir and ladle the liquid over the sherbet until it reaches a pleasant color and seems to thicken just a little. (Depending on the sherbet, it may not even do that.) Refill the bowl by adding either ingredient or both, as needed.

Spinach casserole is the exception that proves the rule - I first ate this in the cafeteria at Shriners’ Hospital, not knowing what it was. It turns out to be a very good way indeed to introduce the novice to spinach, which in those days was regarded with near-univesal horror for those under 50 or so. They kindly shared the recipe with me, and it’s been a mainstay at holiday dinners. Just another benevolence from the good folks there.

 

 

SPINACH CASSEROLE

I suppose you could use fresh spinach in this, but 16 ounces is a pound, a lot of spinach to wash, dry, wilt and chop. And if it’s a holiday dinner, you’re doing other things, too. So use the frozen with an easy conscience.

 

16 oz. chopped frozen spinach, thawed

1/4c. butter

1/3 c. flour

1 4 hard-cooked eggs, sliced

1 tsp. salt

1 and one half c. milk

one half tsp. dry mustard

1 c. shredded sharp Cheddar cheese (or American, if it’s all you have)

croutons - I use Kellogg’s Croutettes - to cover the top of the casserole

Preheat oven to 425 degrees, and grease the casserole dish you’re using - a shallow 1 and one-half quart one is good.

Squeeze as much liquid as you can out of the spinach and arrange it in the bottom of the casserole.

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter. Stir in the flour - mixture will be thick - and let it bubble for at least two minutees. Remove the pan from the heat and slowly whisk in the milk, a little at a time, stirring madly to remove lumps. Return the pan to the heat and cook, stirring constantly, until it begins to bubble. Remove from the heat and stir in the salt. With your fingers, break up any clumps of the dry mustard and sprinkle it over the sauce and stir it in. Add the cheese and stir until melted.

Slice the hard-cooked eggs and place them in a layer over the spinach. Pour the cheese sauce over the eggs and sprinkle the croutons on top in a generous layer.

Bake 15 minutes, longer if you have had to use a lower heat because other things are cooking in the oven simultaneously.

Serves 6.

A Potato Gratin

 Found: A truly excellent potato side dish. The fact that it's portable enough to carry off to holiday dinners elsewhere adds to its charm. And I found that it's flexible - once you learn the basic recipe, the theory will let the cook make it larger or smaller as the number of diners vary.

Credit for this recipe goes to the fine website Food 52, who had it entered into a contest from the Canadian website Katheryn's Kitchen.What initially attracted me to it is the idea of caramelized onions, always a superb partner to the potato's charms. I'd never had a potato gratin recipe that totally satisfied me until this, and as I researched the best way to carry this recipe off, I learned several things. 

One is that the thinner the potatoes are sliced, the better. They not only cook more quickly, the more potato surface is exposed, allowing for more potato starch to thicken the cooking liquid. Shallow is better than deep, allowing for more crusty top and also making for more even coking. This is a dish that calls for low and slow. Not to worry if you can't manage the time for this before dinner - it reheats very well, covered with foil at 375 degrees for about 30 minutes; just be sure you have a baking dish that can handle that.

You can slice the potatoes and onions in a food processor, although I didn't. My knife skills are that of an experienced amateur - not all the potato and onion slices were even. I tried to put any noticeably thicker slices at the corners and sides of the baking dish, thinking they would get more heat there than in the center. Yes, whipping cream - I haven't tried it with lower fat dairy products, like using whole milk for part of the liquid. You're on your own there. Yukon Gold potatoes are the way to go here, by the way, softening nicely but keeping their shape.

The original recipe called for a dish "about 8 x 12 inches". I used an oval gratin about 9 x 12 inches when I made this the first time. The second time, I made a batch half again larger - 3 cups of cream, for instance - and used a 9 x 13 glass baking dish.

Interestingly, the onions seem to dissolve almost completely, adding to the mystery. Letting it stand after it's removed from the oven is helpful, allowing it to set up and become a little more solid.

2 c. whipping cream

4 garlic cloves crushed

3 peppercorns

3/4 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. dried thyme

1 Tbs. oil plus more for greasing pan

1 large white or yellow onion, thinly sliced

2-3 lbs. Yukon Gold potatoes

1 c. shredded Gruyere cheese

 

In a saucepan, combine the cream, garlic, peppercorns, salt and thyme. Bring almost to a boil over high heat, drop the heat to very low, cover the pan and cook for 15 minutes. Remove from the heat.

Meanwhile, put a skillet over medium-high heat. When hot, add the oil and swirl around to cover the bottom. Add the onions. Saute, stirring occasionally, until golden brown. This may take 30-45 minutes.

Preheat oven to 300 degrees and grease baking dish. Thinly slice potatoes and lay out a single layer in the bottom of the dish. Sprinkle about a third of the onions over the potatoes and then a fourth of the cheese. Add another layer of potatoes, another third of the onions and another fourth of the cheese, then repeat again for a third layer. Finish up with a last layer of potatoes.

Using a sieve, strain the cream onto the potatoes. It won't cover them completely, but shake the pan gently to help eliminate any air bubbles. Sprinkle with the last of the cheese.

You may want to place the baking dish on another pan in case it bubbles over - mine didn't. Bake 90 minutes - 2 hours. It should be bubbling all over, and golden. A sharp knife inserted into the center of the pan should encounter no resistance.

Serves 6-8 - but as I always say, one never knows.

A New Twist on Affogato

We now return to our more-or-less-regular programming here on St. Louis Eats. Between traveling quite a lot in late autumn and a burst of theater, there hasn't been much food around this part of the web. So things will be settling down - I hope.

This little item is a rarity: A recipe I haven't tried. But the idea is brilliant, and it's based on one of my favorite desserts, affogato, which is simply some hot espresso poured over vanilla (or other) ice cream. A little lily-gilding is sometimes a good thing, and this is a smart idea. I found it in a brochure from Companion, the St. Louis bakers. As such, it calls for their bread, of course.

 

4 - 1" slices of Companion Pain Beaucaire, a day old

3 Tbs. butter

1/2 c. sugar

1 tsp. cinnamon

pinch of salt

salted caramel, vanilla or chocolate ice cream

freshly brewed espresso

 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Remove crusts from bread, discard or save for other purposes. Take remaining bread and tear into small pieces. Place pieces in large bowl.

 In a small saucepan heat butter over medium heat and cook until butter solids at the bottom of the pan become brown. As the butter is heating, add sugar, cinnamon and salt to the bread bits. Pour the browned butter, including those solids, over the bread and toss to combine.

 Line a baking sheet with parchment and lay out the croutons on it. Bake for 30-45 minutes , stirring occasionally. Let cool and store in sealed container. (Will keep for a week at room temp, 3 months in freezer.)

 For each serving, put ice cream in a bowl, sprinkle croutons over it, and then pour hot espresso over the ice cream and croutons. Serve immediately.

Mango Cheesecake

For someome who isn't a cheesecake addict, I feel like I've made a lot of them over the years. They've always been contributions to parties, and they work really well for that, easily transportable and well-received. This particular version I did with a friend in mind who is unable to eat sugar. Mango popped into my head and none of my in-house cookbooks had anything alluring, so I began looking on line. Most of this recipe is from a blog called Liv Life, with a couple of adaptations.

I knew I was living dangerously when I thought about putting anything sweetened with Splenda or its generic equivalent in the oven. The "baking" Splenda is actually half sugar, so iunsuitable ffor me here. But baking cake batter uses sugar in a whole different way, to create that structure we fork into with (hopefully) such glee. Cheesecakes are basically custards, and sugar isn't chemically necessary for a custard to bake - viz., a quiche. So I took a deep breath and proceeded.

The easiest thing to do for mango is to buy a bag of frozen mango at Trader Joe's. Some of the comments online remarked that they thought the frozen mango actually had more flavor when used in the cheesecake - my guess is that it depends on what type of fresh  mango you've got and how ripe it is. Thaw the mango and throw it in a processor or blender. My food processor didn't yield a silky-smooth puree but It was scarcely noticeable in the finished product. Still, if that's a concern, blenders always are the way to go. You won't use all of the bag's pureed contents in the cheesecake, you'll have a little left for the glaze.

This recipe didn't call for the water bath many cheesecakes do, but I used one anyway. Two pans, your 9- or 10-inch springform, and a larger one that the springform will fit in. Wrap the outside of the springform in a sheet of aluminum foil after your crust is in - I used a pretzel crust here, but have lost that recipe, so you're on your own for that. (But do chop those pretzels finely.) Any graham cracker crust or other crumb crust, or even none at all, will be fine. You're going to bake the cheesecake with the springform pan in a bath of hot water that the larger pan will hold. I used the scalding-hot tap water I have at home, but you may want to put a pan of water on to simmer.

And, as usual for a cheesecake, all the ingredients need to be at room temperature when you begin. Otherwise, that cream cheese will never relax into a smoth batter.

                                            MANGO CHEESECAKE

1 8-oz.package reduced fat cream cheese, room temperature

1 8-oz package cream cheese, room temperature

1 scant cup granulated sugar (just a wee bit less tha a cup) or equivalent Splenda or the like

pinch of salt

1 tsp. vanilla extract

3 large eggs

1 1/2 Tbs. flour

1 Tbs. cornstarch

14 oz, about 1 3/4 c. mango puree

juice of 1/2 lime

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

If your mixer has both a whisk and a paddle-type blade, use the paddle. This is not a batter that should have a lot of air incorporated into it. On low speed, mix together the cream cheeses, sugar or sugar substitute, salt and vanilla. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing until each is nearly fully incorporated into the batter. Then add the flour and cornstarch and continue until smooth. Finally, stir in the mango puree and the lime juice.

Have the hot water ready. Put the springform pan into the larger pan. Pour the batter into the springform. Place both pans on the oven shelf and add hot water around the springform. (This is the easiest method for me, and avoids moving a pan of hot water and cheesecake batter off a counter into a hot oven. Ponder your abilities and situation and act accordingly.)

Bake an hour to an hour and15 minutes, or longer. Cheesecakes should look puffy at the edges and still wobble in the middle when you remove them from the oven. And take the cheesecake pan out first, place on a cooling rack and then deal with the water.

Cool at least an hour.

 

Did the cheesecake crack? Mine did, which sometimes happens. The rest of the mango puree will be used to glaze the cake, so the crack will be invisible.

If you have a little less than the specified amount of mango, that's okay; just cut back a dab on the water and gelatin.

Glaze:

1 1/2 tsp. powdered gelatin

3 Tbs. water.

1/2 cup mango puree

1 tsp lime juice

In a small bowl, sprinkle the gelatin over the water and let it stand for 5 minutes to soak up the water. Heat the mango and lime juice to a boil, add to the gelatin and stir well, so that the gelatin dissolves. Pour over the cheesecake, and tip the cake around to let it cover the top. Let set and then refrigerate.

Serves 8-10

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

Picky about chocolate chip cookies? I can sympathize. I pretty much avoid the commerical ones, feeling that they shouldn't be that crisp. I never got in the habit of making them at home, having kids who grooved on peanut butter cookies instead, and I was happy with that. And I went through a two-year period of serious brownie investigation after they left home. Perhaps that's what led me to the recipe today.

This is from Brenda Leong of B. Patisserie  in San Francisco. I found the recipe a while back in Food and Wine magazine, and tried it as something to bring to the polls with me when I worked as an election judge.They are, quite simply, the best chocolate cookies I've ever had. I've made them with toasted pecans in them, and, for the knowing, with black walnuts. Like truffles, black walnuts are one of those musky tastes that some people find abhorrent. Years ago, a friend of mine, a New Englander living on Long Island, insisted he loved nuts and would love them. So I sent some. He gently, tactfully, told me that he thought they'd gone bad. I sent another batch, this time from Hammons, the biggest provider of the nuts in the world. I knew they'd be fresh. Same report from the gent. I just let the whole matter go. His family grew cranberries - perhaps his palate had been marred.

The batter needs to be chilled - the recipe called for an hour in the freezer, but I just cover it and put it in the fridge for at least a couple of hours. Make today, bake tomorrow, if that's your pleasure. But there is one step I would urge you to comply with. Line your baking sheets with parchment. Years ago when I was a penny-pinching single mom, if I had been able to find baking parchment, I would have considered it a extravagance to be passed up. I'm sure greased and floured pans would work here. But the parchment makes these so much easier to work with. I crumple the parchment up before putting it on the baking sheet - it wants to roll, of course. Then when the cookies are done, if I will need the baking sheet again, I slide the paper and cookies off onto the counter to cool. They're too soft to go directly on the rack. When they're completely cool, they'll often just scoot off - before that, they're very gooey. Bonus: The cookie sheets don't need to be washed afterwards.

 

CHOCOLATE BROWNIE COOKIES

 

1 pound (16 oz.) semisweet chocolate, chopped (I'm currently using 8 oz. Baker's semisweet and     8 oz. 70% chocolate from Lindt or Ghirardelli)

4 Tbs. unsalted butter

4 large eggs, room temperature

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 tsp.vanilla

1/4 tsp. salt

1/2 c. flour, sifted

1/2 tsp. baking powder

1 12-oz. bag semisweet chocolate chips

 

In a large heatproof bowl (glass, metal) set over a pan of simmering water, melt the chocolate and butter. Stir occasionally, until smooth, and set aside.

In another large bowl, beat together the eggs and the sugar until they're thick and pale - a handheld mixer is the easiest way to do this, but if necessary, you can use a stand mixer. On medium speed with the handheld, it'll take about 5 minutes. Beat in the salt and vanilla. . Use a rubber spatula and fold in the chocolate, then, together, the flour and baking powder. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Cover and chill the batter - if you are hoping for it to chill quickly, use a flat baking pan like a 9" square. Figure on at least an hour - less if you use the freezer. I've kept it overnight, although it's more difficult to work with when it's that cold.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. (See above.) Scoop out dough that's about 2 tablespoons' worth - one of those round measuring spoons that's heavy metal helps, but soon you will be able to eyeball it. Moisten your hands, and roll the dough itnto a roughly-shaped ball. Ignore what they resemble at this point and place them about 2 1/2 to 3 inches apart on the parchment.

Bake until dry on the edges and crackled on top. Start checking around 10 minutes - most of mine in my oven take about 13. Do not put directly on racks  when done, but let cool at least 10 minutes. (You may slide the parchment directly onto your kitchen counter if the counter is heat-tolerant.)

I get about 60 cookies out of this - but I admit I tend to make them a little smaller - they're rich, and that makes more to share with friends!

 

Louisa's Cake

Not every dessert need to be elaborate. I grew up in a world where my mother, of the Rosie-the-Riveter generation, and her friends, all teachers, valued things like a one-bowl cake and the much-vaunted wacky cake. Pies and layer cakes were for special occasions or left to grandmothers who didn't work five days a week. These days, there's more expectation of A Production when it comes to dessert - but that's just another reason to admire Nigella Lawson who somewhere in one of her books has a photo of a platter of brownies piled in a mound, showered with powdered sugar and studded with long, slender candles for a different take on a birthday cake.

This cake isn't quite that dramatic, but it could be. It's a little more work than a pan of brownies, but not much. I found it on Food 52, one of my favorite food-obsessed websites, where it's very popular. Named for an Italian woman from Chianti who showed a reader how to make it, it's a simple one-layer cake that needs nothing, although a drift of powdered sugar or some fruit alongside are lily-gilding possibilities. It's moist, interestingly flavored and textured, and quite craveable. Not terribly sweet, it's a good breakfast cake, too.

The recipe calls for a 9- or 10- inch springform pan. Don't use a 9-inch layer cake pan for this - it almost certainly won't be deep enough if you use all the batter. I used a 10-inch springform, which was fine. Next time, I will line the bottom with parchment or waxed paper so I can slide the cake onto a covered cake plate. The recipe calls for one apple - I used part of a Granny Smith and part of a Fuji because that's what I had on hand. You can grate them in the processor using light pressure or on a box grater's largest holes. If you worry about them browning, and I did, stir them into the ricotta - and by the way, supermarket ricotta worked fine here. If you do that, it's easiest to toss the grated lemon zest into that as well. I also whisked together the dry ingredients, even though the recipe didn't call for it, just because that's my habit.

The recipe originally called for 25 to 30 minutes of baking. Like a great many of the readers who wrote in, mine took longer even though the 10-inch pan makes for a shallower cake, which theoretically should bake faster than a 9-inch pan's contents. I went 38 minutes and it perhaps could have gone a little longer. To my eye, it looks like a cheesecake, that same golden-ness and shape. But it's its own beast and a lovely one at that.

 

9 Tbs. unsalted butter (1 stick plus 1 Tbs.) , room temperature

1 c. plus 2 Tbs. sugar

3 large eggs, room temperature

1 1/4 c. flour

1 Tbs baking powder

1 pinch salt

1 c. ricotta cheese

zest of 1 lemon

1 apple, peeled and grated to give about 1 cup

 

Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Grease and flour a 9 or 10-inch springform pan. Optional: Line the base of the pan with parchment or waxed paper. Put the flour, salt and baking powder in a medium bowl and whisk to mix. In another bowl, stir together the ricotta, apple and lemon zest. 

Cream the butter and sugar in a standing mixer until light and fluffy. Drop the beater speed to the lowest possible and add the eggs, one at a time. Scrape the bowl as needed  throughout this. Add a third of the flour mixture (you can be casual about this and eyeball it). When it's fairly thoroughly mixed in, add half the ricotta mixture. Add another third of the flour, mix in, add the rest of the ricotta, and then the last of the flour.

Scrape into the prepared pan, smooth the top (moistened fingers may be the preferred tool for this) and bake for 35-40 minutes. The cake should be golden and the sides pulling away from the pan.

Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes , loosen the sides with a knife and remove the sides. Leave on the bottom if you want to keep it that way, or slide onto the rack if you've used the wax paper, or even invert it, although I think that top's too handsome to have wire marks on.

Serves 6, but as usual, who knows?

On Mince Pies (Keep Reading!)

Last year at St. Louis Magazine, one of my colleagues a piece on Christmas food, with his thumbs up/down on several things. I took deep exception to his dislike of mince pie, and parried back with a discussion of my own.

During that Christmastime, I was on the road for family functions in all directions. This year, I'm staying home, and today made the mince pies I spoke of. Perhaps not as pretty as the scallop-edged ones they found a photo of last year, but remarkably tasty.

I've made my own mincemeat sometimes, and other times I've used the commercial sort, although I do try to go beyond the Nonesuch that's usually found in supermarkets. It'll do in a pinch, but I keep my eye out for other kinds throughout the year. One year, I found good stuff at the now-gone Esicar's in Cape Girardeau. This time, I found a jar of British mincemeat, Robertson's, at Global Foods in Kirkwood.

It's seriously good, tart, a little heat to it, very rich. And that's as it should be. Just as a good hamburger should have a proper meat-to-bread ratio, so also should a mince pie. These little guys, which is how I first found them in a church in the heart of downtown Cardiff, Wales, cheering weary shoppers, are two-bite pies, and the texture of the crust is almost as important as the mincemeat. It's the usual size in Great Britain.

I just use cupcake pans and a biscuit cutter to make rounds that fit into the tins. The amount of mincemeat I spoon in might be, in my pans, a generous tablespoon.

Here's the recipe for the dough. It's very forgiving, essentially a shortbread that you roll out. I can see it small rounds cut out and baked flat (or in the cups) with no filling and lemon curd piped in, or maybe a mousse of some sort.

 

1 3/4 c. flour

6 Tbs. powdered sugar

2 1/2 tsp. grated orange peel

1/4 tsp. salt

1/2 c. (1 stick) cold unsalted butter cut into 1/2 inch or so pieces

1 egg yolk

2 Tbs orange juice and perhaps a little more

 

Glaze: another egg, beaten

 

Whiz the flour, powdered sugar and orange peel in the food processor until mixed. Add the cold butter. Process until it looks like coarse cornmeal. Whisk together the egg yolk and 2 tablespoons orange juice in a small bowl or cup and add to processor. Blend until moist clumps form, adding more juice by teaspoonsful if it seems dry.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Gather dough into a ball and flatten firmly into a disk. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill 30 minutes or so. (Longer is okay, but you'll need to let it get closer to room temperature to work with it.) Roll it out so it's about 17 inches across. If you need to patch it, you can. If your cupcake pan has 12 spots, start out by cutting 12 rounds from the dough and press them into the pan. Add the mincemeat to each round. Then I use a wee star cutter to cut out something for the top of the tart, but you may use whatever's around that fits, even a thimble. It's nice to let the filling show through. Brush each topping with a little of the beaten egg. If you don't have a brush that small, I've used my fingertip before.

Start baking that pan - set the timer for 18 minutes - and begin the same process with your next pan. Check the first pan, and continue baking if necessary until the top is a golden brown. (My times have gone from 18 minutes to 25.) You may gather the scraps and re-roll the dough with a very minimal loss of texture.

I've gotten anywhere from 18 to 24 pies out of this, depending on what I run out of first, the mincemeat or the dough. (The Robertson's gave me 18.)

    

Pickled Shrimp

The party season is upon us again, and I've found a fine shrimp recipe for an appetizer buffet or even a first course. Pickled shrimp is a old Southern thing - if you find the word "pickled" a little too much, feel free to call them marinated, because that's what you'll be doing during their overnight refrigeration. Like all such recipes, it's easy to  monkey around with it a little.

Among the ingredients is pickling spice. It's a commercial mixture that a number of companies make; I found it at Schnucks with the other spices. The components are very coarse, peppercorns and whole cloves and such. You may, before you set the shrimp out for guests, wish to go through the batch and shake the larger bits off each shrimp as you place it in a serving dish. As I did that, I also drained most of the pickling vinaigrette.

Bob's Seafood had 26/30 shrimp - that phrase talks about approximately how many of them make up a pound, and that translates to reasonably large, but you may use whatever's available, smaller meaning more work shelling them and larger more expensive. While I seldom de-vein shrimp, I did here, giving more surface for the pickling liquid to penetrate.

 

PICKLED SHRIMP

 

2 lbs. shrimp

2 small onions, thinly sliced

1 lemon, washed and the middle section thinly sliced and seeded

2 Tbs. capers

1 cup olive oil

1/2 cup tarragon vinegar

2 Tbs. pickling spices

2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. sugar

1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce

1/2 tsp. dry mustard

1/4 tsp. ground red pepper

(optional 1/4 c. chopped parsley)

 

Peel and, if you choose, devein the shrimp. Cook in boiling water 3-5 minutes, drain and rinse with cold water.

Layer the shrimp, onions, capers and lemon slices in a container. Whisk together remaining ingredients except the parsley, and pour over the shrimp. Cover and refrigerate for 24 hours or so, stirring occasionally.

Drain mixture, shake off coarse spices as noted above, stir in parsley and serve.

Yield: About 5 cups, serves 8 or so, but with shrimp in particular, you never know, do you?

Another Potato Salad

It's not too late. You can still do a very good potato salad for Labor  Day. The original potato salad I started out with (having grown up in a potato-salad-free home, I was left to my own devices) was a three-day affair, or at the least two, cooking the potatoes, seasoning them while still warm with vinegar, letting that sit overnight, and then dressing it the following day, preferably to be served the third day, or at least several hours later.

This version is much like the potato salads I first had at church barbecues on the north side of the city back in the Seventies, creamy rather than chunky, and with a good sweet-sour-spicy seasoning. I like it spicy, which is now how this recipe, which began with one in Jim Fobel's Big Flavors, evolved. His calls for mixed sweet pickles, which included pickles,cauliflower, pearl onions and red peppers. All I could find that first time was mixed hot dill pickles. I like dill but not so much dill pickles; nevertheless that was a hit. Of course, just like the lipstick color that was perfect, those pickles disappeared from the market, and I went on to other things. I subbed hot paprika for regular to add some heat, and, depending on who I was cooking for, even added some cayenne or Tabasco to the dressing. The batch currently mellowing in my fridge includes hot bread and butter pickles, which is nicely heretical. Early tasting is extremely promising.

3 pounds russet (baking) potatoes

Salt

3 large eggs, hard-cooked

1 Tbs. sugar (or substitute)

1 Tbs. cider or red wine vinegar

1/2 tsp. black pepper

1/2 tsp. paprika

1/3 c. finely chopped pickles (see above)

1/3 c. finely chopped onion (green onion is nice)

Put a pot of water on to boil, and salt it generously. Cut the potatoes up in two or three pieces and add to the pan when it comes to a boil. Cook until the potatoes are fork-tender, which could be 15 to 30 minutes depending on the size of the chunks. Drain and set aside to cool.

Meanwhile, chop the eggs into a bowl. (A pastry blender is useful for this.) Mash a little with a fork, and stir in the mayonnaise, mustard, sugar, vinegar, pepper, paprika, pickles, onion and 2 tsp. salt. Refrigerate, covered, until ready to use.

Peel the potatoes, and mash them until they're somewhere between chunky and mashed. Pour the dressing over the potatoes and mix thoroughly. Taste for seasoning, and refrigerate  to chill for several hours.

When ready to serve, check seasoning again and readjust if needed. Serves 6-8.

 

An Italian Chicken Salad

This is a very different sort of chicken salad. No dried cranberries, no curry powder, no slices of celery. I found it in some food magazine years and years ago, and they traced its ancestry to Harry's Bar in Venice, where it was used in little sandwiches, the Venetian tramezzini, crustless triangles with the filling a mound in the middle of the sandwiches. It's a richer chicken salad than many, and, yes, the recipe includes anchovies. People are funny about anchovies - the visuals seem to get them. But the salty little rascals are minced up, so that's not a problem here. This has been really popular with folks I've fed with it.

 

1 c. finely chopped cooked chicken

4 hard-cooked eggs, finely chopped

1 can (2 ounces) flat fillets of anchovy in oil, drained and finely chopped

1 small onion, grated

1/4 tsp. fresh-ground pepper

1/3 c. mayonnaise

 

Mix together, and taste the mixture - I sometimes find it needs more black pepper. Perhaps more mayo?

 

Makes about 2 1/2 cups chicken salad. I prefer it on a bread that's tender rather than chewy, but that's a call for you.

Bacon-Tomato Dip

Yes, another dip recipe. This is remarkably good as-is, but lends itself to changing around. Bacon and tomatoes, just like the sandwich. but there's no reason why one couldn't use Ro-Tel for a little heat, sub Miracle Whip for the mayo, use Greek olives instead of the bacon, add onion or chives - you get the idea.

But the basic game works like this:

 

1 lb. bacon

1 c. mayonnaise (I used reduced-fat)

1 c. sour cream (and reduced-fat here, too)

1 tomato, chopped and seeded.

 

Cook the bacon (it needn't be perfectly crisp), drain well, and chop or break it up. While the bacon is cooking, stir togther the mayo and sour cream. Add the bacon pieces and stir in, then the tomato. Makes about 3 cups.

 

I prefer to do this beforehand, to allow the bacon's smokiness to permeate the dip better. (At first, the mayo predominated.) I stirred the tomato in close to when I served it, thinking it would leach out liquid and get sloppy. Since I'd removed the seeds and all the liquid with them, that didn't happen, and it was fine the following day. I did season it with a few grinds of black pepper - most bacons are sufficiently salty that you won't need salt.

 

Very chunky, and fairly stiff; this works well with bagel chips. And someone muttered about putting it on top of a burger, which sounds good, too.

Feta Dip

"Just bring something." That's the refrain many of us hear. Whether it's a meeting, a social gathering or goodness knows what, eventually our fall-back recipe, whether it's devilled eggs or Julia's mushrooms alla Grecque, doesn't wow 'em any more. Or, just as likely, it doesn't wow you any more. There's only so many times you can make almost anything before it becomes a chore, not a gift to the people you're feeding.

I'm a big believer in dips. In catering circles, sometimes they're referred to as slathers, served with those short, fat spreaders and small slices of bread, and that's fine, but most folks think of them as going with chips or crudites. In fact, one non-cooking bachelor friend of ours I've always encouraged to bring vegetables to this sort of function so I can have an excuse to bring a couple of dips. (Chips are great, and I love them, but cutting up vegetables to go with dip is my idea of punishment.)

And so I've come up with a couple of new options, both of which went over well with my most recent testing group. This is the simpler of the two.

I kept reading that Bulgarian feta is the best, so I got some at Global Foods in Kirkwood. And it's just what I think of when I dream of feta, creamy and rich and soft but not falling apart. And I had no qualms about using reduced fat sour cream with this. I can imagine this going well with cucumbers or cherry tomatoes, in particular.

 

FETA DIP

8 oz. feta cheese

1 c. sour cream

3 very thinly sliced green onions (save some of the green for a garnish)

 

Break up the feta with a fork or a pastry blender (at last: another use for them!). It doesn't need to be perfectly smooth, but smaller lumps are what you're aiming for. Stir in the sour cream until it's well mixed and then most of the onions.

I can't imagine you'll need more salt, but you might consider lemon juice, black pepper or a very light shot of Tabasco to season this with. Just taste and consider.

Yields about a cup and a half.

A Rose Sangria

Back to hot weather. Hot, sticky, hanging-out instead of energetic weather. What to drink? Something less alcoholic than my favorite gin and tonic, perhaps? A recipe in this week's New York Times Food section sent me off on a mild tangent since I had company this weekend. We didn't make the paella the article by John Willoughby discussed (although I agree; it's amazing made outside), and another story, by David Tanis, on peaches must also have stuck in my brain.

There was this rose sangria Willoughby offered, and I riffed on that. Very happy with the results, too, especially if you go for an un-sweet sangria. The cling peaches I'd peeled and macerated with a little Grand Marnier and a squeeze of lime juices to go with the morning's pancakes didn't get finished, as the crowd headed out for the baseball game. This batch was dead ripe but still pretty tart, and that worked out well for the recipe. I did use the Spanish dry rose called for - I had some Marques de Caceres on hand, and there's always Grand Marnier in the liquor cabinet. They asked for freshly squeezed orange juice, but come on, it's July, half a year away from decent juice oranges. Chilled Tropicana it was. Skipped the requested lime juice. And I subbed my peaches for their apricots. So here's how it went:

 

1 750 ml. bottle chilled dry rose

1/2 c. orange liqueur

1 c. orange juice

4 peaches, peeled, pitted and sliced thinly

1 pint raspberries

 

Mix together. I'd serve over ice, and if it seemed too strong, add a splash of club soda to each glass.

About 8 servings, but as usual, YMMV. I think there are some gougeres in the freezer I may haul out....