Bea's Beans

If I was to create a cookbook that represents my mom, one of the standouts would surely be Bea's Beans. These beans are legendary.


If there's a potluck, it's assumed that Bea will bring beans. And if Bea decides to bring something else? People have been known to pout.


"Oh, I was really looking forward to Aunt Bea's beans."


"What? No beans from Bea? Darn."


So here they are. 


Step One
Pull out your trusty recipe card. The one you've had for forty years or more. Fondly remember the times you've made this recipe, and the adjustments made. Each time they're a little bit different. If you have to, squint to read the distinctive writing while lamenting the decline of cursive writing.

Recipe Card Front

Recipe Card Back

Step Two
Measure and sort the beans. 

Drag a good amount from the pile.

Quickly scan to see if there are any small stones. Also admire the beautiful rings.

Pull the clean beans into a waiting dish.

Step Three 
Soak the beans and rinse well. 

Rinse until water is clear.

Step Four
Boil the beans until soft. Just before adding the baking soda, mom leans over and quietly reveals a story about a family friend who claims that baking soda "Take the farts out." Later I learned that indeed, baking soda does help lower flatulence associated with beans. 

Beans before boiling.

Beans after boiling.

Step Five
Mix the beans with other ingredients. Taste to be sure they're tasty. Feel free to taste repeatedly. The beans are certainly edible at this point, but they're not baked. So hold yourself back from consuming too many beans at this stage because seriously, they're even better fresh from the oven.

Beans mixed and ready for baking.

Step Six
Bake. The beans come out of the oven bubbly. If you've gotten the recipe right, the baking pan will be blackened in some areas. And each time you make these, your family will fall in love all over again.

BEA'S BEANS 


2 pounds dry beans (4 cups)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup catsup
1 1/2 sticks butter
3 cups brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 cup vinegar




Sort and wash beans in cold water. Cover with cold water, and soak overnight. Drain.
Place in large sauce pan. Cover with warm water and boil gently about one hour. After coming to first boil, add 1 teaspoon soda. Skim foam to remove any specks. Then boil gently until soft (not mushy.) Remove from heat. Drain off liquid and reserve. Put beans in dish used for oven baking. Stir and add reserved liquid to cover beans. Bake at 350 for an hour and a half. Reduce heat to 325. Bake 1/2 hour. 


Variations: Microwave bacon strips 4-6 until crisp. Crumble and mix into beans. Return to oven at 325. Mom has also used homemade catsup in place of the store bought. Feel free to vary the amounts to suit the tastes of your family.


Suggestions: This recipe makes a lot of beans - easily enough to share at a potluck or family gathering. I imagine you could halve the recipe. And I can guarantee that, if you put them in the fridge overnight, they'll taste just as good tomorrow.

Bar Cookie Discrimination - And Soup With Salad

I'll confess that I'm not a person who gets excited about the holidays.

You know the type of person I'm talking about? I'm picturing an over-the-top co-worker who decorates their oatmeal cubicle for every holiday and also dresses for the holiday right down to a a sparkly sweater, holiday-themed turtleneck,  matching socks, and -especially for Christmas- a Santa hat with jingle bell.

I'm equally not celebrating the fact that one of the local radio stations decided to begin broadcasting Christmas music 24/7 - in early November. Please! Halloween had just ended.

Christmas cookies, on the other hand, I can relate to. So on a recent business trip I picked up a copy of  The Christmas Cookie Club by Ann Pearlman. But, uh, I have two small cookie-related issues with the book:  

1. I like bar cookies. In fact, I like bar cookies so much that I started a tumblr feed for them. 
2. Individual cookies are too much work - too much standing, too much stirring. I know this because I have made large quantities of them on my own many years ago, and have refused to make them ever since then.  

So perhaps you can understand why I was rather appalled that the hard-working bar cookie was written off immediately in the opening salvo of The Christmas Cookie Club: "No bars. They stick to each other and crumble."

No bar cookies allowed? Bah humbug.

Nevertheless, I still enjoyed the book. It was a light-hearted, gossipy, chick-flicky romp through an annual Christmas cookie club event, accompanied by cookie recipes and ingredient history lessons. I don't really know what the history lessons were doing in the book, but they were informative and brief.

The characters are stereotypical, but lovable: there's Marnie, the party hostess (aka, head cookie bitch,) who's widowed with children and learning to love again; then there's Vera, the former cocaine addicted stripper who turned her life around, and there's Sissy representing for all women of color replete with sassy attitude and talented (yet troubled) children.

The premise of the novel is equally simple: there this Christmas Cookie party every year. There are rules you must follow. If you don't follow the rules, you're out of the club. One of the club rules is that you have to share the story of why you chose these cookies this year - which becomes a metaphor for everything that's happened to you in the last twelve months because apparently the characters rarely see each other except on this mandatory first Monday in December. Still, as a Christmas Cookie Club participant, you get some eating, some drinking, some dancing, and twelve dozen cookies out of the event, plus all of the recipes.

In fact, there are more than twenty recipes in the book - and not only for cookies. Being a bar cookie snob, I snubbed the hand-rolled, fastidiously decorated cookies throughout the book. I am not going to take the time to hand-write fortunes, then hand-turn the little fortune cookies even though I have all of the time in the world to do so. And truth be told, not all of the cookies are that fussy.

I went for the Roasted Carrot Ginger Soup on page 327 and the Mandarin Orange Salad on page 328, and wasn't disappointed one iota. I chopped and combined the carrot, parsnip, onion, and brown sugar.

Chopped Vegetables with Brown Sugar

I poured in chicken stock, covered with aluminum foil, and placed into the oven for a couple of hours. Once removed from the oven, I carefully spooned all into a large stock pot, and added additional chicken stock. Then I let it boil for awhile, and finally pureed.

Making the salad was even more of a breeze. That involved macerating mandarin oranges in a combination of honey and cinnamon, and mixing with olive oil, salt, and pepper. That was added to fresh spinach and topped with toasted walnuts.

Mandarin Oranges, Honey, Cinnamon

The result? One fabulous late autumn lunch for me and more soup in the freezer for later. Delightful - just like The Christmas Cookie Club by Ann Pearlman (even without bar cookies.)

Soup and Salad

Roasted Carrot Ginger Soup
1 1/2 pounds carrots, peeled and halved lengthwise
1 pound parsnips, peeled and quartered lengthwise
1 large onion, sliced
3-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons packed dark brown sugar
8 cups rich chicken broth, more if needed
Salt to taste
Pinch of cayenne pepper
1/4 cup creme fraiche for garnish
Snipped fresh chives for garnish

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine the carrots, parsnip, onion, and ginger in a shallow roasting pan. Dot with butter and sprinkle with brown sugar. Pour two cups of the broth into the pan. Cover well and bake until the vegetables are very tender, about 2 hours. Transfer the vegetables and broth to a large soup pot. Add the remaining six cups of broth. Season with salt and cayenne pepper. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer partially covered for 10 minutes. (I completely forgot the butter, cayenne, creme fraiche, or chives. Still delicious!)

Mandarin Orange Salad
11-ounce can mandarin orange segments, drained
1 tablespoon honey
cinnamon
Handful of walnuts (broken into large pieces)
Lettuce (romaine, red or green leaf or mixed)
Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper, to taste

Place the mandarin oranges in a small bowl. Add honey and sprinkle with cinnamon. Set aside for several hours (or longer). Toast walnuts at 350 for 3 minutes, and let them cool. Wash and tear lettuce into bite-size pieces. Add oranges. Add enough olive oil to wet greens and toss well. Sprinkle with a little salt and pepper and sprinkle with walnuts. Note: If taking to a potluck, wait to toss with olive oil and keep walnuts in a small bag until ready to serve. (I used spinach instead of lettuce and toasted my walnuts in a dry pan on the stove top until nearly smoking and slightly burnt.)

P.S. CBS picked up rights to the book, so don't be surprised if The Christmas Cookie Club becomes another one of those oft-repeated holiday specials.

Sage Me From Disaster

I tried the Cooking Light app recently and was pleasantly surprised with my first selection of recipes, so decided to try another combination: Chicken with Sage Butter, Garlic-Roasted Kale, and Herb Mashed Sweet Potatoes

Like recipes in Cooking Light magazine, the app give details. For example, here's the delectable screenshot of the Herb Mashed Sweet Potatoes:

Screenshot of Herb Mashed Sweet Potatoes

The lower four windows provide menu accompaniment suggestions. In the upper right corner, you can save the recipe and retrieve at a later date, or build your own menu. There is also a dropdown menu in the upper left corner to select the type of food you're looking for: entree, side, dessert, and so on.

Tapping "See Recipe" in the upper right corner shows you something like this:

List of ingredients

Note that each recipe has an Overview (the picture,) Ingredients, and Directions. The ingredients are detailed, easy to follow. So are the directions - and each ends with calorie, fat, protein, carb, fiber, and more counted and displayed in bold:

Calorie Display

All good, right?

Then I started cooking, and the app was not to blame for what followed.

Cooking is a study in second-by-second mindfulness. You must be attentive to what you are cooking and to what you are doing at all times. If you fail to pay attention, something's bound to happen.

I had an extraordinary amount of kale in the house - both from the last weeks of my CSA membership, as well as from the local store. I washed it up and blanched with the intention of freezing immediately. And then I lost my concentration.

In emptying the large pot of boiling hot water, I dumped a sizeable portion on my left hand. I cussed, dropped the hot pan, then picked it up and finished pouring the water. I saved as much the kale as I could, started cooled water running on my hand. This happened in a matter of a minute or so, and my fingers felt like they were on fire.

After the burning subsided, I headed to the computer to ensure I'd treated the burn correctly. I had, and there was no need to call friends with medical experience or rush to the ER. I returned to the kitchen and kept running cool water on the burn. I watched for signs of blistering, and was relieved there was none.

Once again, I didn't bring my iPod Touch into the kitchen. My kitchen's just to small the the potential for water-induced damage too high. I wrote out the bare minimum instructions for the recipes and got started.

I minced shallots, threw them in a pan with some olive oil and brown sugar, and set others aside for a sauce. I set a peeled potato on another burner to boil. I pounded the chicken thin, dredged with salt, pepper, and flour.

I also prepped the kale. Or rather, I didn't use kale, but instead chose Tatsoi. This is another dark, leafy green, and has a mild taste. I don't like the sharper tasting greens, so this is a wonderful find. I figured I could mix it with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic, and roast quickly in the oven for about the time suggested in the recipe.

The chicken went into the pan, and I drained the sweet potatoes. I returned to the oven, stirred the tatsoi, and mashed the sweet potatoes with the shallot and brown sugar mix.

I flipped the chicken and returned to the oven. And was greeted with a wave of smoke - the tastoi was burned, mostly. I blinked my eyes, pulled the pan out, and set it aside.

Burnt Tatsoi

I pulled the chicken out of the pan and set it on a cutting board to rest. A pat of butter went into the pan, along with sage leaves, followed quickly by the remaining shallots, salt, pepper, and fresh-squeezed lemon. I used a whisk to stir the whole thing up, and the sauce was ready in no time.

I centered the herb mashed sweet potatoes on the plate, added chicken and sauce. I put some beautiful sage leaves on the side for pictures. Looks good, right?

Chicken with Sage Butter. Herb Mashed Sweet Potatoes

After picture taking, I decided to taste the tastoi, and was pleasantly surprised. While the vast majority was burnt and crispy, some was salvageable - and had a roasty autumn flavor.

The meal was prepared in little over an hour that floated by quickly. And, despite the burns to my fingers and tatsoi, the meal tasted delicious. I can honestly say that I've rarely prepared a bad recipe from the Cooking Light group.

I do not, however, recommend the app. For me it's just too cumbersome to operate while cooking. I can't see using a wet finger to tap on the screen to move from ingredients to directions, or from recipe to recipe. If it was all shown on one screen - maybe. Do yourself a favor, save money on the app and buy the magazine.

Captivated by Cappelini Caprese

Caprese salads are typically composed of fresh tomato, buffalo mozzarella, julienned basil, olive oil, salt, and pepper. This recipe adds pasta into the mix, and is great for the lazy, hazy days of summer that we're in now.

This recipe comes from a magazine. I have no idea what magazine, though I'm sure I found the recipe sometime in the mid-90s, and have been preparing it every summer since then. It's so simple, and so celebrates the season that you'll add it to your summer repetoire in a heartbeat, too.

The pictures show a recent version of this salad that uses the last bits of cooked and cooled macaroni, red onion, and leftover chicken breast. The recipe is easily adapted in that way. Don't have parsley? Don't worry about it. I'm sure the salad will be delicious anyway you make it today. And - if there are any leftovers - it will be even better tomorrow.

Cappelini With Tomato

CAPPELINI WITH TOMATO
Serves four or more

12 oz cappelini, cooked, tossed with 2 T olive oil, and cooled to room temperature

4 large tomatoes, diced
1/2 cup scallion, chopped
1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
4 oz mozzarella, shredded - be sure to use FRESH mozzarella.
Salt and Pepper to taste
Walnuts (optional) for garnish

Combine the tomatoes, scallion, basil, galric, mozzarella, salt, and pepper in a large bowl and let stand, at room temperature, for at least thirty minutes. Toss with pasta and walnuts and serve.

This recipe is great for potlucks and picnics. On top of my worn out recipe card I wrote "A summer classic" - indeed.

Kohlrabi, Potatoes, Bok Choy

I gotta say, cooking from a Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) share is a challenge for me. I feel like I've been thrown completely off my cookbook rhythm and still haven't found the beat yet. It's out there, somewhere...

Earlier this year I picked up a copy of Farmer John's Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables (subtitled: Seasonal Stories and Recipes from a Community Supported Farm - by Farmer John Peterson and Angelic Organics.) How's that for a mouthful?

John Peterson is an iconoclast, grounded -literally- in the history of farming in the Midwest. He was raised in farming, nearly lost his farm, and then raised the farm up to be a shining beacon in the CSA community. Currently, the Angelic Organics farm supplies more than 1200 shareholders in the Chicago area. This video gives you a sneak preview of the full documentary regarding John and his farm:

The cookbook is indispensable for any CSA member. It's chocked full of vegetables, herbs, recipes, stories, and more. This year I've received more kohlrabi than I have ever seen...in fact, I'd never tried kohlrabi before this summer. It's in the cabbage family, so think of that taste. First, start by nibbling the kohlrabi raw. Move on to Koleslaw.

I peeled then chunked the kohlrabi and placed in my food processor. I added in a few carrots for color. Then I pulsed the food processor a few times until I had a lovely slawy mix. I added a classic coleslaw dressing of mayonnaise, cider vinegar, sugar, salt, and pepper, then stirred and tasted. Yummy!

Kohlrabi Koleslaw

Once you've mastered raw kohlrabi, head straight for mashed kohlrabi. Combine with potatoes for a fabulous alternative to mashed potatoes. Keep 2 to 1 ratio of kohlrabi to potatoes, and you'll do just fine. Be sure to boil separately, the combine with butter, milk, salt, and pepper. There's a delightful recipe on page 203 of Uncle John's Cookbook.

Mashed Kohlrabi and Potatoes

Bok Choy is one of those vegetables that stymies many. It's also a member of the cabbage family, and can be used like both like celery (the white stalks) and like leafy greens (the dark green part.) Uncle John's suggested sauteeing the choy with butter, soy sauce, garlic, and ginger. I wasn't disappointed with the recipe on page 80.

Gingered Bok Choy

This is a cookbook for vegetable lovers everywhere. I find that I'm referring to it over and over again to figure out what to do with that vegetable I just learned about. I'll often try the vegetable raw, then experiment with cooking and see what transpires.

CSA cooking? It's an adventure!

KOHLRABI KOLESLAW with Klassic Kreamy Koleslaw Dressing

1 kohlrabi, roughly chopped (or more – you decide)

Whir the kohlrabi chunks in your food processor until it resembles your favorite Koleslaw size…sliced, shredded, or little bitty bites.

Klassic Creamy Koleslaw Dressing
(from Joy of Cooking)
3/4 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup cider or rice vinegar
1-2 tablespoons sugar
Stir until well blended. Makes about 1 cup, which slathers the one kohlrabi; store for use on other unsuspecting kohlrabi’s. Pour over shredded Kohlrabi and mix it up.

Suggested Additions:
carrot, pineapple, fresh herbs, bacon, bell pepper, onion – the sky’s the limit!

Favorite Summer Salad

Everyone could use a no-stress, no mess summer salad. Mine is a variation of the ubiquitous three-bean salad that leaves ample room for spontaneous ingredient meandering based on what's on hand.

The base ingredient is three cans of beans. In this mixture I used kidney, black, and pinto beans but honestly, virtually any mixture of three beans would do the trick. If you're feeling daring - only use two, or throw all caution to the wind and try one kind of bean. Three different colored beans, however, have a little magic cooking moxie.

Magic Moxie Bean Mix

Next up is an assortment of farm fresh vegetables, and this is where your creativity and local availability really take shape. If you're at the farmer's market, pick up red and orange peppers, sweet corn, red onions, tomatoes, and broccoli. Here I used much of what was in this week's Swier Family Farm CSA box.

Another addition is the freshly chopped herb (or herbs) of your choice. In this salad, I used dill exclusively; the salad works equally well with only cilantro.

The finally, add some of your favorite dressing. I used the final drops from a bottled dressing, and it was just enough to coat the salad, but not enough to overpower the dill. I also added some freshly cracked black pepper, and stirred to combine. I plan to let it sit in the fridge overnight and share at a potluck tomorrow. By then the flavors will have had time to marinate and become all kinds of crazy yumminess.

Favorite Summer Salad

My favorite summer salad is healthy, easy, crowd-pleasing and incredibly forgiving to the cook. What's your favorite summer salad?

Favorite Summer Salad
3 cans cooked beans - black, pinto, kidney
1 cup green, red, yellow, or orange bell pepper
2 ears fresh corn, shucked
1 cup (?) chopped red onion (I didn't write down how much I used)
1 pint grape tomatoes, at least halved, chopped if you're up to it
2 tablespoons or more fresh dill, chopped
1/4 to 1/3 cup bottled dressing of your choice (or mix your own)
Salt and pepper to taste

Place everything into a large bowl and mix well. Feel free to experiment with all of the ingredients: in the photographed version, I used a little broccoli, too. I've also made this salad adding in a cup or so of cooked, cooled brown rice or quinoa.

Dining in Denver - Part 2 - That Beet Salad

I was in Denver recently and ate at the marvelous Rioja. Though I had only one bite of the roasted beet salad, I kept dreaming of it...and of recreating it in my kitchen.

Here's the description from the restaurant's menu: Roasted Candy Striped Beet Salad: cucumber mint vinaigrette, snow drop goat cheese, crispy beet chips, pickled red onion, micro beets, mint syrup. To create the salad at home, I began by deconstructing the ingredients.

1) Roasted Candy Striped Beets. There were none in my local supermarket, so I settled for three regular jewel toned beets and roasted them as I typically do.

2) Snow Drop Goat Cheese. Nothing exactly like this in my local store, so I used goat cheese sprinkles.

3) Pickled Red Onion: I headed over to Simply Recipes for a great pickled red onion recipe and adapted based on what was in my pantry...which I didn't write down. Pickling red onions involves sliced red onions, sugar, white vinegar and some combination of spices: cinnamon, allspice, cumin, garlic, and so on. I'm pretty sure I threw in some organic oregano, too.

• In one pot, blanch onions in boiling water 2 minutes, drain.
• In another pot, combine vinegar, sugar and spices. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer five minutes.
• Add onions, summer one minute.
• Transfer to a glass jar, let cool, and keep in the fridge. I simply poured mine into a glass bowl, let cool on the stove, covered with plastic, and put into the fridge.

4) Cucumber Vinaigrette: I searched online for a cucumber salad dressing, but all I found was a lot of recipes for cucumbers in vinegar - and that's not what I was looking for. I ended up with something along these lines...

• 2 cucumbers
• olive oil
• salt
• pepper
• red white vinegar

Pushing the cucumber vinaigrette through cheese cloth.

I peeled and seeded the cucumber, then chopped, and pureed with olive oil, salt, pepper, and red white vinegar. I pushed the pulverized mixture through two layers of cheese cloth and came up with a reasonable facsimile. Next time I won't use the olive oil as it's too pronounced. Still, not bad.


5) Micro Greens: Definitely nothing like these around here, so I used chopped organic charge from my weekly Swier Family Farm allotment.

6) Mint Syrup:  Mint syrup was a breeze to make. There are many variations available online, and I used this combination:

• 2 cups water
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 bunch mint

Mint and Sugar

Throw it all in a pot, boil until slightly thickened. Cool, remove the mint, and store in the fridge. Just try to not drink it all before you get to the salad. Save and use in various other things like mint juleps, tea, or drizzle over ice cream with chocolate syrup.

7) Crispy Beet Chips: I didn't get these made, and, in fact, completely forgot about them. They seem pretty easy, though - extremely thin sliced beets roasted in salt and olive oil until crispy.

The result? Satisfying.

Beet Salad with Mint Syrup, Pickled Onions, Cucumber Vinaigrette, Goat Cheese

I really wish I could have found a different type of beets as the jewel-toned beets have a stronger "beety" flavor than the more delicate candy-striped. I hope I can find candy-striped beets sometime this summer. The chard for the micro-beet greens worked, although I suppose their flavor is also more pronounced; maybe I'll try this again and use the beet tops as salad. Regardless, I'll call the re-creation a success. Taking the essence of beet mingling with cucumber and mint, along with the crunch of the chard has a decidedly summer twist and certainly echoes the one bite of salad I had in Denver.

Community Eats Green Eggs, Some Ham

This summer I'm taking a tour of the wild side of cooking. That's the place in cooking where you don't necessarily have a recipe or cookbook or, for that matter, much of a plan. For me that constitutes wild cooking because so much of what I prepare is strictly from a book. Sure, I throw in a personal flourish every now and then, but I rarely venture into recipe-creating territory. Why this sudden change?

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) has forced me to change my cooking tune totally - at least for the next three or four months. Every week I'll get a bunch of vegetables, and I'll have to do something with them or they'll all rot in the bottom of my fridge; and I wouldn't want to do that to lovely, organic vegetables - ever.

Here's how a CSA works:
1. There's a farmer. He or she is ready and willing to work hard to produce vegetables for your table.
2. You buy a "share" or "half share" which allows the farmer to plant and nourture vegetables.
3. You get vegetables every week for however many weeks. Here in mid-Michigan, it's 18 weeks of organics from the Swier Family Farm.

I'll admit I balked at the hefty (for me) $200 price tag to split a share with a friend. I had all sorts of doubts and we'll see if any of them come to fruition through the summer. I wonder if I'll be so enthusiastic at the end of the summer? So often when I start a new venture, I'm enraptured; by the end of it, I'm ready to move on. As I trudged to the designated pickup location, I had big doubts.

Heavens, my initial fears and doubts turned to total veggie induced elation when I picked up my first share:

• mixed salad greens (about a half pound)
• arugula
• spinach
• swiss chard
• garlic scapes
• fresh oregano
• 13 or 14 radishes of different sorts
• three farm fresh eggs

Eggs and Radishes

All items are washed thoroughly at the farm and bagged, so all you really need to do is start chopping and cooking. I headed straight into the kitchen and made a fabulous frittata. And even using three-four cups of spinach, swiss chard, and arugula, I still have more than I typically eat in a week. Clearly, this CSA thing is worth it.

Garlic Scapes and Salad Mix

I got out my calculator and checked out the cost...something I'm not inclined to do very often. I paid $220 for 18 weeks of deliveries which works out to around $11 per week. I can safely say that I spend that much in vegetables and other foodstuffs every week. It's my hope that this CSA summer will reduce purchases from the local mega-store, and that I'll stop lugging heavy plastic bags into the house, and cease having newly purchased vegetables rotting practically overnight (due to being shipped across the country or around the globe) off of my list. These veggies come from just across the county line, and I can go visit the farm almost anytime. After all, it's my money that helps keep the farm afloat. Or a-planting...

Exactly what lucious vegetables I'll receive depends on the weather and the farmer's winter calculations. Given that farmer's are significantly knowledgeable about these things, I've got my fingers crossed for carrots, beets, sugar snap peas, zucchini, cucumbers, potatoes, garlic, tomatoes, winter squash and who knows what else. Here's what I did with those eggs:

Swier Frittata Number One

Swier Frittata Number One

2 cups assorted greens, chopped. I used arugula, swiss chard, spinach
1/4 cup oregano, chopped
ground cumin, a teaspoon or more
1 huge radish, diced
8 eggs, beaten
Milk (or water if you don't have milk)
Butter
Olive oil
Asiago Cheese

Oh, the frittata, so initially intimidating - actually nothing more than a fancy scrambled omelet. Be sure your pan is well-seasoned and use plenty of oil or butter: your goal is to deftly slide the frittata onto a serving platter.

Place the butter and olive oil in the pan; I like a mixture of both, going heavier on the olive oil, lighter on the butter. Saute the greens and radish until wilted. Throw in the spices, eggs and cheese. Stir it around until well combined and let sit on the burner until the sides are firm.

At this point, you have a choice. You can put the whole thing (pan included) into the oven and finish it off with a little browning from the broiler. You can leave it on the stove top until the center is firm. Either way is OK by me, and I doubt your tummy will notice a difference.

When firm -egg firm- slide onto the serving platter and devour. If you have leftovers, they're OK to serve cold. I'd also suggest a dippy or saucey accompanyment. Whimp-ola me likes catsup (or ketchup,) while fresh salsa could also be delightful.

The other great thing about frittata's is the flexibility: saute an onion, throw in more or less cheese or a different kind of cheese. Nummy!

Roastin' Outside? Roast Veggies!

I picked up a paperback copy of Kitchen Life: Real Food for Real Families - Even Yours! by Art Smith on a bargain table for $7.97. A bright yellow sticker on the cover proclaimed "Fast & Easy Meals Everyone Will Love!" I had no idea who Art Smith was at the time, and really didn't know much more until I opened the cookbook recently.

Smith is a James Beard Award winner and was Oprah's personal chef for 10 years; he still works closely with O magazine and has several restaurants scattered across the country.

The book starts with a quiz designed to determine your cooking style. Before taking the quiz I would have roughly summed up my cooking style by saying "I need something to eat now; I think I have a recipe; and whatever it is, it had better be very good." I don't have a problem throwing out stuff that tastes horrible. Well, I do have a problem with wasting the dollars, but that's another issue altogether.

This "what's your cooking style" quiz isn't numbered. Fortunately, there are only five questions:

• What kind of a shopper are you?
• What are your time challenges?
• What kind of cook are you?
• Are you eating right?
• What are your taste preferences?

The problem is that each of these questions is broken down into three or four additional sections. The question "What are your time challenges" breaks into four sections of four potential answers: A, B, C, D - one answer per section. A numbering system could have been very helpful.

Based on your answers, Smith explains what kind of a cook you are and what recipes you should try. The quiz results said I was a seasonal and confident cook, but didn't catch the "What should I make for dinner tonight" part of my repetoire where I call Little Caesar's and walk the block to pick up a small pizza. With the quiz results, Smith also recommends recipes in the cookbook to suit your cooking style.

Here's where I fell off of the cooking style wagon, and plunged into personal preference territory. I tracked through the cookbook and compile a list of things I was interested in trying. A couple of the recipes required that vegetables be roasted - one of my favorite way to prepare veggies. And especially when it's hot outside, there's nothing like having some roasted veggies waiting to be turned into a delicious antipasto-style meal.

So one night not long ago, I roasted asparagus, beets, eggplant, zucchini, and red bell pepper. They were used to create three different recipes, but the preparation method was the same. You might even try these on the grill.

Half of the asparagus was tossed with lemon juice and zest. The beets were diced and coated olive oil, then combined with toasted walnuts and balsamic vinegar. Both were spectacular served cold. The remaining vegetables went into a grilled vegetable salad along with the remaining half of asparagus.

Beets and Asparagus Roasting

Cold Dinner for a Hot Night

 ROASTING VEGETABLES

1. Chop various vegetables into small, yet chunky pieces. 
2. Coat with olive oil, salt, pepper.
3. Add some other flavors: fresh herbs, bottled dressing from the fridge. Marinate for a bit if you'd like.
4. Turn into a large pan. Try to keep the veggies in one layer.
5. Heat oven to 400.
6. Set pan in the oven.
7. Stir occasionally.
8. Remove when veggies look roasted.

Roasting time varies greatly. Asparagus takes no time and all, and the tips become slightly blackened. That's a good thing. Beets and potatoes take longer  (perhaps 30-45 minutes) and can begin to caramelize during the cooking process; that's a really good thing.

Roasted vegetables are fabulous in an impromptu salad, and can't be beat for little nibbles during the day.

Blah-Blah-Blah Helen Gurley Brown Blah-Blah-Blah

The title tells you what you really want to know. This hot mushroom sandwich from Food Editors' Favorites: Treasured Recipes was an unquestionable fail in my book of food.

First, it's not really a two-fisted sandwich, it's party food. It's an appetizer masquerading as dinner. Second, it's boring...really boring; I would prefer an appetizer to head more in the direction of an amuse-bouche, but this sandwich didn't even have a sense of humor.

It did, however, have an intriguing 1970's pedigree. The recipe is said to have been a favorite of Cosmopolitan founder Helen Gurley Brown; for all young ladies out there who don't know who she is, go read Wikipedia for a fast overview, and thank your lucky, free-wheeling stars that she wrote Sex and the Single Girl many years ago.

The recipe came from celebrated caterer Donald Bruce White who said it was one of Mrs. Brown's favorites. White is worth talking about all on his own, let along thinking about this particularly snooze-inducing appetizer. An article in New York Magazine about 1983's new, hot caterers had this to say about White:

"Donald Bruce White's loyal clients love using his Coalport dinner plates; their Park Avenue drawing rooms are grand enough to accomodate his sterling-silver rolling carving board with it shuge dome-shaped top. White's soirees - deb parties, benefits, late suppers- have a comfortable gentility, an old-money propriety, an enormous sense of style. What would he serve for a buffet supper? Lump crabmeat made with a fine julienne of orange, served with Smithfield ham and corn sticks, spinach in Maderia, and crunchy coleslaw. No hors d'oeuvre with this supper. For dessert, an orange souffle and tuiles, the crispy curved almond cookies. This supper would cost $40 per person. For a first course at a seated dinner, he suggests small mousselines of smoked salmon and heavy cramy formed into tiny eggs and arranged aorund slices of brioche, garnished with caviar." 

Regardless, the sandwich isn't too hard to fix, and I suppose wouldn't be bad for one appetizer among several others for a cocktail party if you do that kind of thing. I don't.

I minced up the mushrooms and placed them in a pan with butter and minced scallion. I cooked until all liquid had disappeared.

Minced Mushrooms

Cooked Mushrooms with Scallions and Butter

Simultaneously, I placed more butter into a pan, added all-purpose flour, and made a lovely roux in no time. I added homemade chicken stock, heavy cream, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and cayenne. That really should have been enough to make it tasty. Yeah right. It was also not enough to make it particularly photogenic.

Then the creamy mixture was combined with the mushrooms. Getting sleepy yet?

At that point I pulled out a square loaf of sourdough bread and trimmed the crust off all the way around...

and cut into slices. Thick slices. The recipe says thin, but I didn't read closely so without a doubt, these were too thick. 

Then I spread the mushroom cream sauce on the bread, another slice stacked on top, more mushroom sauce, and another slice of bread.

Even the pictures of this make me start to yawn. The sandwich went into the oven at 400 for 10 minutes and came out semi-toasty.

I really wanted to like this sandwich. I also really wanted to add roasted red pepper and arugula and something -almost anything- into the mix for zest. Even the cayenne pepper didn't intimidate my taste buds like it so often does, and I couldn't even taste the nutmeg. I can maybe see the appeal of this appetizer with thinner sliced bread; the mushroom sauce was beginning to soak the bread - think both crunchy and soft simultaneously. That was a waste of good sourdough bread; instead of make additional sandwiches, I saved the bread and used it for very tasty French Toast.