Stephencooks

Tomato Bread Pudding

  

This food blogging thing is really fun! For my money, there is nothing I like more than request cooking. I mean, when somebody asks for it and I have to cook it.

So, after I bragged about my ability to "make stuff up" in the kitchen I received this email from my buddy Alanna at Kitchen Parade: A Veggie Venture:!

"Since you are so adept at making it up, I thought I'd ask for help with a quest I've been on for a couple of years. It's what I'd call a tomato bread pudding, a savory dish but erring to custard rather than bread. I've made several versions and all have been disappointing. But I continue to have this mind/mouth vision of a creamy savory custard paired with soft slices of tomato held intact with custard/tomato-soaked bread. I see it slicing, like a tart except no crust."

Fortunately, I had on hand all the ingredients I needed and I couldn't wait to get to the kitchen to give it a try. I think the result is pretty close to the request....but I'll have to wait for Alanna to try it for the final verdict.

Lobster, Zucchini and Corn Pizza

  

This pizza is more of a savory dinner tart than a traditional pizza, since the bottom layer is basically a shallow quiche-like custard of eggs, cheese, vegetables and onions. Also, this recipe is typical of how I cook on a daily basis: making stuff up based on what's in the kitchen, my current whims and Elise's requests, rather than working from recipes (which have the nasty habit of demanding ingredients I don't have on hand).

EoMEoTE #10
Again the host
(who likes to boast
of eggs on toast)
has picked a theme
of which, it seems,
I don't know beans!
I made a dish...
It was delish...
It had eggs (a quiche)
and it had 'toast' (sheesh!)
I wrote a rhyme
that sounds just fine
and Seusslike, a little...
but now for my riddle:
When, in what post,
will our brilliant host,
(who does so like toast!)
move on, like most,
from childhood fare
for her monthly dare
to bloggers out there
to try once again
(perhaps with a grin)
to dream up a post
using eggs on toast?

Our wonderful neighbors Kit and Carrie had a spectacular lobster feast Sunday night to celebrate Carrie's sister and nieces' visit from the West Coast. Unfortunately, Elise was under the weather and unable to attend and Carrie generously sent me home with a whole baked stuffed lobster and a couple of portions of their versions of corn salad and coleslaw for the invalid. Last night, the recovered Elise requested a pizza, and since my pizzas are usually constructed out of what's available in the refrigerator at the moment, the meat from the lobster became the focus of this version.

Using up zucchini is always part of August cooking in Maine so I also had a good measure of shredded zucchini to use up (I had prepared too much for the zucchini rutabaga cakes posted a couple of days ago). This somehow suggested to me a shallow zucchini and spinach quiche in the pizza shell, topped with the lobster and a couple of other items -- including some leftover corn cut from cobs.

The result was a summery one-dish meal on a slice, incorporating a whole range of good local produce, which I served with the leftover portions of Kit and Carrie's salads and a bottle of Pinot Grigio. Thanks Kit and Carrie!

Zucchini Rutabaga Cakes with Tomato Marmalade

 This post was a contribution to the venerable food web event "Is My Blog Burning?" (Anyone or anything in the foodblogosphere that's been around for more than a year is "venerable," possibly even ancient, and this baby is in its 18th month. Talk about venerable!) Each month, food bloggers all over the world blog on a specified theme for one day and some worthy volunteer hosts the event, which means defining the theme and then collecting all the links and posting a roundup of the contributions a few days later. No competition angle here, just good fun in the kitchen!

This month the host is Linda of At Our Table, and in her theme proclamation she announced: Summer's Flying, Let's Get Frying! Anything fried - deep fried, pan fried, or stir-fried - is therefore the name of this month's IMBB game.

"We're here, we're frying, get used to it."

The Epicurious food dictionary defines "fry" as "To cook food in hot fat over moderate to high heat." I've done my part here, with an attempt to bring together a suite of late-summer goodness in these zucchini-rutabaga pancakes with tomato-corn marmalade, but in sitting down to write out the recipe I've run up against a bit of a snag: we don't fry things anymore! Only sauté is allowed in the healthy kitchen of the new century. It's only a word, after all, and in my book (and in the Epicurious dictionary) sauté is just another word for fry, but for whatever reason I'm balking at writing the words "fry the cakes."

This delicacy is due, I think, to a couple of decades of efforts by the food police to convince us that we shouldn't eat fried foods (just Google the words "fried foods" to see pages of links to warnings of cancer and the general decline of civilization). Not that we've stopped frying: we've just switched to sautéing! It's odd, in a way, that this feeling, which came from the low-fat days Before Atkins, has lingered into the post-Atkins era, since fat is apparently good to the Atkinsites. Having it both ways, I guess, is the explanation here: going for low-carbs (which means fats can just ride on in) but at the same time watching the cholesterol meter, just in case. Ah, the knots we tie ourselves into just to fill our bellies and enjoy it at the same time!

"Deep-fry" is still okay, I guess because there's just no way to hide the fact that the food is floating in a vat of hot oil, but you rarely see deep-fried food featured in blogs....and "stir-fry" is okay, because tossing vegetables around in a well-seasoned wok that's probably been prepped with a spritz of vegetable oil spray sounds really healthy and almost fat-free.

There's just no denying that everyone loves fried food. (I had my annual serving of battered and deep-fried fresh clams the other day at Billy's Chowder House and loved every minute of it!) But having a web event to celebrate fried food seems somehow risqué, as if we were coming out of some kind of closet and forcing the world to look at what we are doing, furtively, secretly, in our kitchens, when we said we're sautéing food for our friends and family. We're FRYING UP DINNER in here, and there's NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT!

Ah, freedom!

It feels good to be out in the open with it: honest, unfettered, open for all to see. I'm still having twitches and pangs about admitting that I fried the little cakes, but I'm going to go ahead and say it, since today is FRY-DAY and no one can stand up to the power of foodbloggers united! Thank you Linda, for your visionary leadership and integrity!

Yorkshire Pudding

  

This is the classic side dish for a prime rib -- especially so in winter -- and they make perfect gravy cups!

1 C flour
1 C milk
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 C meat drippings
1 tsp salt

Sift flour and salt together and then combine with eggs and milk. Stir vigorously until smooth. Allow to rest for 30 minutes. Pour drippings into 8 cups of a muffin pan and then heat the pan in a preheated 425º oven for 15 minutes. The drippings will be just starting to smoke. Working quickly, remove the pan from the oven and pour 1/3 cup batter into each cup of the muffin pan.  Return to oven for 20 minutes, then reduce heat to 375º (open the door for a few seconds at this point to bring the temperature down quickly) and continue baking for about 15 minutes or until golden brown and puffy. Serve immediately.

Note: this is best with drippings from your roast. However, if you are using a rotisserie method as I do when doing the beef over a live fire, collecting drippings is difficult. Ask the butcher for the trimmings from the roast (you're paying for them!) and render them ahead of time in a slow oven for the required beef fat.

Wood Roasted Standing Rib of Beef

  

Summer along the Maine seacoast means visitors, so I'm frequently faced with a crowd for dinner, usually looking for something cooked outside. Last night we had sixteen. It's wonderful to see everyone and hang with old friends and new, and doing a big standing rib roast like this, a vat of fresh corn-on-the-cob and a big salad of fresh summer produce makes it easy on the cook since almost all the work can be done before guests arrive.

This is a method I've more or less perfected, starting with the temperatures and timings suggested by Alton Brown in a segment he did several years ago on dry-aging (and then roasting) beef. (A particularly over-the-top Alton-as-mad-scientist piece, it included three days of aging in a carefully controlled temperature and humidity environment and a piece of kitchen equipment described as "...a 16-inch round azalea terra cotta planter...." The results are probably spectacular but this procedure exceeded even my tolerance for complication and labor-intensive food. It's still available at the link given above, if you want to try it...) The sauce is adapted from one described in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume I.

When I really want to go the traditional route I serve this with Yorkshire Pudding...

Corn on the Cob with Basil Butter

 

In my book, fresh corn on the cob is at the very top of my list of favorite foods.  I guess I got this from my mother, Janet Chamberlin Smith. She was raised in a tiny hamlet in Northwestern Ohio, surrounded by farmland and a culture of rural values, and she always made a point of making friends with the local farmers. Her method of cooking corn was to put a pot of water on to boil and then call down the road: "Mabel? Could you send one of your girls out to pick me a dozen?"

She was, probably without knowing why, in tune with the chemistry of corn, because once the corn is separated from the stalk chemical changes are set in motion. Within a day the sugars that make the corn so addictive start to change to starches and the flavor is lost. So, the first rule of corn-on-the-cob is to find a source of today's harvest. This can be a problem in cities, but usually you can find a farmers' markets where the corn you buy at noon was probably harvested within the last day. I'm in heaven, now that I live in Maine, because no matter which way I go when I leave the house I've got several sources of fresh-picked corn.

Once you've got a good source of corn, you need to know what to do with it. It seems to me that there's a lot of confusion about this, so let me just clear it all up now. There is only one correct way to handle corn on the cob: 1)  refrigerate it until you are ready to shuck and cook it; 2) shuck it just before cooking; 3) to cook it, drop the ears into rapidly boiling unsalted water, wait a minute until the water starts moving again, turn off the heat and cover for five minutes. At this point the corn is ready, but it can stay in the water as long as you want.

Of course, corn is best with a little butter and salt, and before I developed my problem with black pepper I always liked a grinding of pepper on it. Recently, though, I've moved into a new realm with corn, serving it with Basil Butter. As Emeril Lagasse might say, this kicks it up a notch!

Basil Butter is pretty simple: soften one stick of butter (I just microwave it for a few seconds) and, with a rubber spatula, mix in four tablespoonsful of minced fresh basil.

Just picked corn, Basil Butter, fresh tomatoes, a grilled piece of fresh fish or a juicy hamburger: life is good here in Maine!

Seared Swordfish Niçoise Salad

  

Niçoise salad usually starts with tuna, but I had some nice leftover seared swordfish steaks so I decided to make a niçoise-style salad with that.

Traditionally the niçoise formula is the tuna, blanched green beans, sliced boiled potatoes, sliced hard-cooked eggs, tomatoes, vinaigrette and black olives. After the substitution of the swordfish for the tuna I pretty much stayed with this formula, except that I used purple potatoes instead of the usual white, and since I was out of black olives I used green ones. I also scattered on a few capers.  My greens were baby arugula, where the standard is Boston lettuce, and of course I scattered some fresh minced flatleaf parsley over it. A classic, and deservedly so!

Broccaflower Linguine

  

Broccaflower is marketed as a cross between brocolli and cauliflower but in all aspects (taste, appearance, behavior when cooked) except color it's just cauliflower colored green. I suspect that, like "crimini" mushrooms (which are just a variant cultivar of the ubiquitous common white button mushrooms) it's nothing more than a cauliflower variant with a "brand" name added to it. Nothing wrong with cauliflower, though, in my book. I especially like the textural interest that comes from mixing cauliflower with pasta or rice, and since it's normally white -- therefore offering little in the way of visual interest when presented with rice or pasta -- the green color of Broccaflower is welcome in these preparations.

1/2 lb dry linguine
1 head broccaflower, separated into flowerets
1 tomato, chopped
olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 onion, sliced, slices halved
3 T fresh oregano, minced
salt, hot sauce to taste

Steam the broccaflower 5 minutes. Sauté the onion slowly in olive oil, stirring occasionally, until translucent and starting to brown at the edges. Add the tomatoes and cook slowly another five minutes.

Cook the linguine al dente and drain. Add the onion / tomato mixture, the garlic, the oregano and the broccaflower to the pasta. Toss and mix well. Correct seasoning.

Seared Swordfish with Pasta all'Aglio e Olio

  

Summer is the time for swordfish in New England, as the fish move northward and the fishing fleet brings fresh fish to our local docks. Grilling it is usually my favorite way to handle a nice fresh steak, but pan-searing has its attractions. This preparation is based on Elizabeth David's succinct recipe called "PESCE ALL'AGLITA" (Fish in Garlic Sauce) from "Italian Food": "Slices of any coarse white fish, fried in oil, served in the following sauce: In a mortar pound a clove or two of garlic, add a handful of breadcrumbs, enough oil to make a thick sauce, and a little vinegar."

I added minced mixed herbs, some minced oil-cured black olives and some capers to her sauce. It was very satisfying, with some pasta all'aglio e olio, a salad, a crusty bread and a bottle of pino grigio.

Fresh Garden East/West Veggieburger

  

What to do when some of the guests at a backyard barbeque, the ultimate meatfest, are vegans? The usual answer to this is to make a double dose of salad and be done with it. But my feeling is, just as it's unacceptable these days to tell wheelchair users to use the back entrance, making burgers for some and salad for the others isn't quite right. Even if you're not ready to join them, you have to respect their choices.

Veggieburgers have been around forever. In the sixties and early seventies when we were all cooking from Diet for a Small Planet and eating at macrobiotic restaurants you could have a veggie burger every night of the week and never see the same preparation twice. Most of them tasted like processed carpet sweepings, but we were saving the planet and keeping ourselves in balance so we didn't mind.

Of course, there are all sorts of frozen and just-add-water veggieburgers and mixes available in the natural foods section of the supermarket, but, since I think slow food is good food, I decided to make my own from scratch. I usually use eggs to hold patties like this together, and routinely make sauces based on mayonnaise, so I welcomed the challenge to make a good-tasting burger which contained no animal products at all.

I started with an old favorite around here: the Asparagus Rice (asuparagasu gohan) from Shizuo Tsuji's Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art. Not only is the asparagus cooked with the rice, but the liquid is flavored with Liquid Smoke, saké and soy sauce,  all of which impart a strongly satisfying flavor to the rice. Also, the asparagus pieces hold their juice, which goes a long way towards overcoming the dryness issue with veggieburgers. From there, the idea was to loosely follow the Japanese onigiri concept, which is to add flavoring items to riceballs before grilling, although in onigiri the additions and fillings are usually hidden inside the riceball.

The sauce was a bit of a challenge, since my sauces frequently contain eggs, but the puree of tofu and flavorings turned out to be a hit both with the vegans and the carnivores, as was the grilled endive topping. Of course, the red onion, tomato and cucumber in the burger added further to its fresh garden appeal.

Bottom line: I like my regular burgers, but the increasingly hard-to-avoid reports on industrialized meat and egg production do give pause. The veggieburger is sort of a stunt in which the cook simulates a meat-based product with non-animal products, so it seems to me that the only reason to do that is to satisfy the urge to rise to the occasion of a kitchen challenge. There are lots of easier and more sensible ways to reduce or eliminate the use of animal products in cooking, but this was fun. And it was appreciated as a gesture of equality by the vegan guests.

Zucchini Tomato Parsley Salad

 

This simple salad makes the most of the late summer harvest, and therefore shows up on our table every year around this time. With a grilled piece of fresh fish and a couple of ears of fresh Maine corn, dinner doesn't get much better than this.

4 small-diameter zucchini
2 thin slices red onion, halved
1 ripe tomato, cut in wedges
6 stalks fresh flat leaf parsley
salt to taste

Dressing:
1 T balsamic vinegar
3 T extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp hot sauce
1 T dijon mustard
1 T fresh tarragon, minced
1 medium clove garlic, peeled, crushed

Wash and cut the zucchini in thin disks. Blanche in rapidly boiling salted water until just starting to be tender, about 4 minutes. Shock in ice water to stop cooking. Drain and sprinkle with a little salt to taste.

Separate parsley leaves from stalks and discard stalks.

To make dressing, combine all ingredients and whisk until emulsified. Correct seasoning. 

To assemble and serve, remove the garlic clove from the dressing. Mix together the zucchini, the onion and the tomato in a bowl, pour the dressing over the salad and toss gently. Top with the parsley leaves.

Martini 101

My friend Jason, a poet trapped in a bartender's body, is very serious about his day job, so I recently consulted him on the ancient art of martini making.

"You don't want any of those oddball derivatives, I hope," Jason said, drawing himself up to his full height. "I make them, but I'm not going to do anything to promote any of that swill." Jason tends bar at a stodgy upscale inn down the coast (not a place you're likely to find me drinking, though I have seen Jason in his workplace a time or two) and he does a lot of weddings in the summer. "Good for making money but you wouldn't believe some of the concoctions people order," he reports.

"None of those oddball derivatives," I promised, explaining that I just wanted his take on the best procedure for making a superior traditional gin martini.

It turns out there's a lot to know about making martinis, and most of it is about water, ice and temperature.

But we started with the age-old question of how much dry vermouth goes in the shaker. Over the last forty years the meaning of the words "dry martini" has gone from "martini made with dry vermouth" (instead of sweet red vermouth, which was a component of an older style of martini) to "martini made while nodding in the direction of the vermouth bottle."

Carrie's Spicy Sugared Cocktail Almonds

 

Our friends Kit and Carrie are great and frequent entertainers. One of their secrets is that they always have some interesting nibbles available when drinks are about. Since they've been doing this for a long time, and getting better and better at it every year, from the evidence, they've accumulated a nice little list of regular offerings. Their spicy nuts, especially nice in the winter with a fire going and Christmas lights glowing but just as good in August, is one of my favorites so last year I asked Carrie for the recipe, which she generously provided. A couple of days ago I made a version of this classic, with some raw cashews I had in the kitchen instead of the almonds Carrie uses (pictured). They were good but I think the original recipe (with almonds) is better so that's what I've reproduced below (with Carrie's permission).

It's Blog Party Time!

3 T peanut, olive or other oil
3 C whole blanched almonds
1/2 C sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp hot pepper flakes
1 T additional sugar

Heat oil in heavy pan over medium heat. Add almonds and sprinkle 1/2 C sugar over them. Sauté until the almonds become golden brown and the sugar caramelizes. Remove almonds from pan and toss in a bowl with salt, cumin, pepper flakes and the additional sugar. Spread on a plate to cool, then toss again before serving to separate any nuts that become stuck together while cooling.

Fresh Crab Canapé

  

Maine lobsters get all the attention but Maine crab is a star in its own right. Available fresh-picked in plastic containers all over the state, it has a delicately fresh down-to-the-sea flavor and takes none of the work required to use lobster in appetizers and salads.

This simple treat can be whipped up in a few minutes after a day boating or at the beach and so is a great way to have an elegant-looking and -tasting nibble for guests without much pain.6 oz fresh crab meat

3 T mascarpone cheese
2 T minced chives
2 T minced red onions
1 tsp dried wasabe powder
1/2 tsp hot sauce
salt to taste
a squeeze or two of lemon juice, to taste

Assemble all ingredients in a bowl and mix thoroughly.

To serve, place on a thin slice of cucumber on a little toast or cracker.

Notes:
1. Serve immediately. If this waits too long before service the red onion and other additions start to overtake the delicate taste of the crab.
2. Regular prepared horseradish, used sparingly, can substitute for wasabe powder.
3. Plain cream cheese can substitute for the mascarpone,
4. Don't stint on the salt: it adds a lot of life to the crab flavor.

Tuscan Wood-Roasted Chicken with Porcini & Sausage Rice Stuffing

 
 

I usually roast a chicken every ten days or so, because Elise loves it so much and we like to have some cooked chicken in the fridge. I usually do a straight roast, with the cavity stuffed with garlic cloves, herbs and a forked lemon, in an open roaster pan in the oven. Pan juices, some potatoes or rice and a vegetable and we have nice Sunday dinner.

Last month Kevin over at Seriously Good made a Tuscan Chicken dish, based on  recipe he picked up on a trip to Italy. It looked mighty good to me so I decided to make Kevin's dish the starting point for a Tuscan-inspired chicken of my own, with the chicken to be roasted on an outdoor grill over a live fire. Kevin's preparation involves marinating chicken breast meat in wine, lemon juice, oil and herbs and then sautéing the chicken and making a sauce from the reserved marinade. He served it with a mushroom rice pilaf, which sounded to me to be the perfect accompaniment.

My version keeps the marinade pretty much as Kevin did it, except that I marinated the whole chicken and then stuffed it with a porcini/sausage/rice stuffing. Then I roasted it over a charcoal and hardwood fire and made a sauce from the marinade, similar to Kevin's, but with the addition of the chicken broth that I'd earlier used to soak the porcini and the sautéd giblets.

The results were very satisfying. The lemony garlicky flavor of the marinade stood up to the smokey flavoring the live fire introduced to the chicken and the stuffing, with its herbs, porcini and sausage, made a fine accompaniment. Thanks, Kevin!

Betty's Authentic Baltimore Crabcakes

  

Elise's mother Joan lives in Baltimore, and of course we visit her there, and of course, like everyone who goes to Baltimore, we love to have crab when we're there. I still remember my first Baltimore crab cake, the weekend I met Joan almost ten years ago, and I also remember that I decided that night I would never order a crab cake north of Baltimore again. A Baltimore crab cake is all about fresh lump crabmeat, lots of it, and not much else. But when you order crab cakes in Boston, Maine, New York, etc., there's a good chance that what shows up on your plate will be a sodden patty of breadcrumbs, celery and precious little crab, which almost certainly won't be fresh

Fortunately, Joan has a wonderful friend, Betty Wasserman, who grew up in Baltimore and knows how to make the real Baltimore crab cakes. Still going strong at 92 (and living in Atlanta now), Betty was generous enough to share her authentic recipe with me (and give permission to publish it), for which I will be eternally grateful. Maine crab is not exactly the same as Chesapeake Bay crab but it's extremely fresh which is one of the most important requirements in making a good crab cake, so I think that tradeoff is worth it.

Note that in the photo above I'm showing a canapé-sized cake, about 1-1/4" in diameter, served on a bed of arugula. (The recipe below makes about 20 of these.) Betty's recipe makes burger-sized cakes and calls for the cakes to be sautéd in a pan, but at this canapé size I find it easier and better to deepfry them. Also, the sauce shown (recipe below) is my invention but I don't think Betty would object.

Cuban Canapé

  

We were having our newlywed friends Tom and Hugh over for a celebratory glass of bubbly on the deck and I had nothing in the way of snacks to put out. So, with fifteen minutes before the guests' scheduled arrival, I whipped this up out of some linguica sausage I found in the fridge combined with other odds and ends.  Something about it reminded me of the traditional Cuban sandwich, which has layers of ham, cheese, roast pork and pickles, usually with mustard, so I added the chopped dill pickles, which elevated it from adequate to interesting.

Mocha Mint Granita

This post was an entry in the 11th monthly Sugar High Friday event, this month hosted by Ronald at loveSicily. The theme is sweets made with coffee, though Ronald, drunk with the power of the hosting scepter perhaps, has banned all versions of tiramisu! It WAS our first choice, having never attempted it, but somehow we'll soldier on.

Granita is reputed to have been made in Roman times, and I've been making coffee granita for over 30 years, so this immediately came to mind. However, since it is so popular and traditional, I challenged myself to come up with a fresh twist on the old favorite. The mint crop is burgeoning and I found a box of Ghirardelli  chocolate in the cupboard, so: mocha mint granita. Served with freshly whipped cream, it was reminiscent of mint oreo cookies-and-cream accompanied by a rich cup of fresh espresso.

Mussels Julia

  

Craig Claiborne once made a comment to the effect that "the main reason to cook mussels is to make the beautiful broth" into which crusty bread can be plunged, and I agree with him. I  do like the little mussel morsels found inside the shell, but when faced with a bag of mussels I think most about how to flavor the broth. Last night my friend Julia showed me a simple, fast way to make mussels which produced the most intensely flavored broth I can remember. Served under candlelight on the porch on the most perfect of summer nights, with cold pino grigio and chunks of day-old ciabatta for dunking and mopping, it was the perfect summer appetizer.

Grilled Asparagus à la Sutherland

  

This is my version of what has become a signature dish around my daughter Jennifer's house, where grillmaster Craig plies his trade. The combination of the slightly smoked flavor of the asparagus with the fresh, Asian-fused salsa gives this simple dish a unique and seductive quality, to the point that once you've had it the idea of "asparagus" jumps into your head whenever you're buying grillables at the meat or fish counter in the summer.

1 bunch asparagus (thicker preferred if available)
2 slices fresh tomato, chopped
2 scallions, minced
2 T basil, minced
olive oil
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
1/4 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp hot sauce
basil leaves for garnish
toasted sesame seeds for garnish

Rinse the asparagus and pat dry. Snap the ends from the stalks, pour a little olive oil over them and roll around to coat. Grill on a medium hot charcoal fire until just tender. The surface will just be starting to blister when done. Sprinkle with salt just after removing from the grill.

Mix the tomato, hot sauce, scallions, minced basil, vinegar, sesame oil, and soy sauce. Spoon the relish mixture over the asparagus and garnish with the basil leaves and sesame oil.

This is a great accompaniment to grilled fish. It can also be the center component of a salad. Leftovers, in the rare instance that there are any, make a good starting point for a breakfast omelet.

Spanish-style Fish Stew

  

There are dozens of recipes for fish soups and stews along these lines. This one that I've adapted over the years from more complex (and authentic) recipes is fairly fast and easy compared to many versions of bouillabaise and other similar Mediterranean-style fish soups or stews, and it doesn't depend on availability of fish heads and trimmings for the broth. (I love Julia Child's version of bouillabaise, but even with my love of labor-intensive cooking I have a hard time getting up the energy to go there). Also, if you're entertaining, the time-consuming part can be done ahead and all you have to do when it's time to serve is bring the broth to a boil and add the clams and fish for a few minutes just before serving.

Most fish markets and supermarket fish counters offer some sort of inexpensive generic "chowder fish" which is the base for the broth of this soup, and from there you can go as fancy or simple as you want with the other fish and shellfish. The citrus, onion, herbs, tomatoes, wine, saffron and garlic combine with the fish to make a deeply satisfying and complex stew, just right for a stormy summer night or a cozy fall supper for a small group of friends.

Corn / Green Bean Salad with Bacon, Horseradish and Deep-fried Sage Leaves

  

I love blanched green beans with vinaigrette, and this is one of my many, many variations of that idea. This one is particularly nice in August or September, when the corn is sweet and the question of how to use up all that sage in the garden starts to become critical.

1 lb fresh green beans
1 ear fresh corn, kernels removed
4 slices cured bacon
1/2 tomato, peeled, seeded, chopped
1 T prepared horseradish
1 slice red onion, chopped
20 sage leaves
2 T olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1 T balsamic vinegar
salt, hot sauce to taste
oil for frying

Trim the beans and blanche in a large pot of salted boiling water for about 3 minutes, until just starting to be tender. Shock in an icewater bath to stop cooking. Drain, then pat dry. 

Cook bacon 'til crisp, drain on paper towel. When cool, crumble bacon.

Place 2" oil in small heavy sauce pan. Heat to 350º. Add sage leaves and fry for about 30 seconds. Drain in a sieve and sprinkle with salt.

Mix olive oil and vinegar and whisk rapidly until emusified.

Toss together the beans, corn, tomato, onion, horseradish, olive oil/vinegar mixture, and garlic. Season to taste.

To serve, mound bean/corn mixture on a plate and top with the crisp fried sage leaves and crumbled bacon. Good for a picnic or an outdoor supper, or as a side to some grilled corn or fish.

Pumpkin Blossoms Stuffed with Lobster and Corn, with Chile-Peach Glaze

  

This post was an entry in the Paper Chef competition, a fun web event modeled on the Iron Chef competitions on the Food Network: a group of "secret ingredients" is announced on the first Friday of each month and participants must submit a recipe using those ingredients within a time limit, usually 72 hours. Unlike most other web food events, it's an actual competition, with a winner and losers: usually the winner of the previous month's Paper Chef picks the next one to display the coveted "Paper Chef Winner" badge.

This month's secret ingredients were announced on Friday, August 5th, and they are dried hot chiles, peaches, edible flowers and a "wild card" ingredient: anything produced locally, in honor of the August Eat Local Challenge.

The biggest challenge for this edition of Paper Chef was finding a good edible flower to use as a starting point. Maine, while producing abundant and wonderful corn, tomatoes, strawberries, squash, and greens in its short growing season, is not really known for its creative cooks, and I doubt I've ever seen an edible flower at a farm stand around here. A call to the Wild Iris Herb Garden resulted in an opportunity to leave a message on a machine (Lucy's usually there only by appointment in July and August) so I wasn't sure I could get what I needed from her within the time limit.

Of course, I'm surrounded by flowers of all sorts in the summer here, and I quickly determined that hollyhocks and daylilies, two of the most abundant flower crops in my garden, can be used in cooking. However, in my research I also came across various warnings that one must know precisely which variety of hollyhock or lily is going into your pot, since all are not edible, so I took the timid route and decided to find a flower sold for consumption. I hate poisoning my friends and family.

I briefly considered my all-time favorite vegetable, broccoli, since it's the hands-down champion edible flower of them all, but as adventurous as I think I am I couldn't get to a dish that combined peaches and broccoli, though I'm going to work on this.

The solution came in the form of an old friend: the wonderful twice-weekly farmers' market in Copley Square in Boston, which I used to visit faithfully at each session when I worked across the street in the Hancock Tower. I had a business meeting in town on Friday morning and afterwards stopped by the market, where I found big beautiful bunches of orange pumpkin blossoms at the Atlas Farm booth, and I picked up some fresh artesanal goat cheese from Crystal Brook Farm (Sterling, MA 978-422-6646 - no web site). I had hoped to find some nice Massachusetts peaches but it turns out that the harvest for those doesn't start for another ten days.

For the local product on the ingredients list there was only one choice for me: the great Homarus americanus, the American Lobster, which, while enjoyed on tables all over the world, is produced almost entirely by the hardworking men and women of our Maine lobster fleet, some of whom dock their boats about 400 yards from my stove. For me, the other great local product, no matter where you are in the U.S., is fresh corn just picked from the field. When the corn is in I have to have a dose every couple of days, with a fresh garden tomato or two, to fortify myself against the coming snows of winter.

Pumpkin blossoms, local Maine corn from my favorite farm stand, lobster from my local purveyor -- it seemed these might develop into a dish of pleasant importance. The cheese I decided could go with the lobster and corn in a stuffing for the pumpkin blossoms, and, with a few New Mexico chiles on hand (as always) and some Southern import peaches from Golden Harvest, I was ready to go to work.

Deviled Egg Salad

 

This post was an entry in the monthly web event known as the End of Month Egg on Toast Extravaganza, or EoMEoTE for short. Invented as the result of some banter between food bloggers Anthony of SpiceBlog and Jeanne of Cooksister, the name comes from the idea that at the end of the month there's nothing left to cook with except eggs and bread, EoMEoTE is a challenge to food bloggers all over the world to come up with yet another way to satisfy with these most basic of ingredients.

In recent months, Jeanne has added another layer to the EoMEoTE fun by requiring a literary effort to accompany the food, within bounds decreed by Jeanne, with sometimes spectacular and always entertaining results. This month, the topic is Harry Potter, and, though I've only read about a hundred pages of the tale, I won't let that keep me on the sidelines: my humble contribution follows (with the recipe below the story).

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Facing Muggletown

Everyone who knows the Wooster clan will tell you straightaway that we're not the type to run hither and thither when things aren't just so, but the first morning back in London after our recent hiatus at Aunt Agatha's country manse was a test of the family fortitude.

Jeeves, as you may recall, is the man I absolutely rely on in every instance, so when he slid a breakfast tray bearing only a lonesome beaker of the necessary, along with the requisite sugars, spoons and such, I was stricken speechless for a moment.

He had nearly evaporated from the room when I caught him with a sharp calling-out: "Jeeves!"

"Yes, sir?"

"I'm sorry, Jeeves," I said, not sparing the man, "but there's something definitely missing from this tray." You can't let these fellows get too long on the leash, you know.

"Yes, sir?" Jeeves at his most devious. I had a mind to ring up the agency, despite previous disasters along those lines.

"My breakfast, Jeeves. Sustenance." After all, a fortnight in the clutches of the Agatha is a physically draining experience. I gave a little drum of the fingers on the tray to warn him of the depths of my displeasure.

"Ah, yes, sir. Breakfast. Well, you see, sir, there is a rather large problem facing us this morning which has, shall we say, rather impeded the preparation of breakfast. Perhaps if you would care to open the morning paper the matter would be more clear."

Grilled Fennel / Chicken Salad

  

Recently I've been thinking of the joys of grilled fennel, so with another sunset beach picnic looming (we try to do one every other week) I picked up some fennel and some chicken breasts for the grill. This couldn't be easier, and it also couldn't be more typical of my cooking: some grilled stuff mixed with some leftovers  and a surprise ingredient or two to make something new. This time the leftover component was a cup of my spicy cole slaw, and the surprise ingredient was green grapes.  The result was very satisfying: the fennel flavor stood up to the spicy cole slaw and retained just enough crunch to add textural interest to the mixture, and the lime/red onion/ginger/toasted spices in the cole slaw gave the chicken salad a unique Asian twist, with the grapes adding a surprising note of sweet juiciness.

The evening on the beach with friends was beautiful and the gang gobbled this up in no time. Summer: I love it!

1 lb boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 fennel bulb
15 green grapes, halved
1 cup spicy cole slaw
3 T basil, minced
salt, hot sauce to taste

Rinse, pat dry and spray the breasts with vegetable oil.  Slice the fennel bulb in 1/4" vertical slices and spray with vegetable oil. Grill the chicken and fennel on a medium hot charcoal and hardwood fire about 10 minutes on a side. Off the grill, drizzle the fennel with basalmic vinegar and sprinkle with salt. Allow chicken and fennel to cool to room temperature.

Slice the chicken in thin slices and cut crosswise if the slices are more than 2" long. Slice the fennel on an angle across the grain. Mix all ingredients, season to taste. Keep cool until serving.

This makes an excellent sandwich filling with lettuce and a tomato slice, or can just be served as a salad on a bed of greens.

Braised Oyster Mushrooms

 

Oyster mushrooms have become regularly avalable in supermarkets over the last few years, and when I see some nice big intact clusters of these exotic  beauties I can't keep myself from buying a few. A few years ago, I came up with a treatment that keeps the clusters whole, since chopping them up and using them like other mushrooms means losing the visual interest of the leafy clusters, and gradually this recipe has won a place on the short list of "recurring characters" at our table.

Artichoke Hearts Provençal

  

About ten years ago I developed this dish in response to the presence of big cheap artichokes in the supermarket produce section. This was inspired by a fleeting moment watching Jacques Pepin doing something with artichoke hearts earlier in the week on his show "Cooking with Claudine" but when I googled I couldn't find any artichoke recipes from Pepin on the web. I remembered Jacques babbling away to his daughter Claudine about how wonderful artichokes are while absentmindedly prepping the little beasts, and then he put them in salted water to simmer. I must have turned it off at that point, or been distracted, so from there I was on my own. But how can you go wrong with garlic, tomatoes, onions and basil? The fennel was included because I had some in the house, but now I wouldn't consider making this without it: the combination of artichokes, fennel and ham, in a provençal-style sauce, is more or less perfect. Okay, I'll admit: this little dish is a lot of work due to the prep of the artichokes - but whenever I can get big, reasonably priced artichokes I do it, because it's wildly popular every time.

Porcini, Pork & Peppers Pasta

  

Porcini mushrooms! Someone once called them "one of God's greatest gifts to humanity" and I certainly concur. Although the fresh ones are almost never available in the U.S., a good dried porcini is worth every cent of the $30 to $40 a pound they usually cost. Meaty, aromatic and versatile, they can be used alone or in combination with fresh mushrooms, to which they add a deep, almost smokey flavor. And while the flavor is delicate, it has enough power to stand out in a combination like this one, and to hold its own in the presence of a big-flavored red wine. I buy them in large jars so I'm never without a supply on hand since I cook with them every chance I get.

This dish is typical of a way that I use up leftover meats. It works well with beef or chicken, with minor modifications, but this week I had some leftover cooked pork. The combination of the meaty porcini mushrooms with the tender, flavorful pork was a winner.