Doesn’t look like much, does it?
A chicken breast smothered with sour cream and crushed canned onion rings? Yuk.
A piece of white fish with grated carrot and sprinkled with toasted pine nuts? Yuk.
It’s actually a potato side dish that’s really flavorful. Really decadent.
And did I say easy? Oh, yes.

I had a similar dish at some friends a week or so ago (thanks, Penny, for the idea). I liked her casserole so well that I searched for it on the internet. Found a number of variations, and most of them contain a similar list of ingredients: frozen hash brown potatoes, defrosted, sour cream, chopped onion, cream of chicken or cream of mushroom soup, grated cheddar or sharp cheddar cheese, potato chips or corn flakes and butter.

I found several versions at http://www.cooks.com/ and finally selected this one because it suggested sharp cheddar cheese, AND it listed a half of a package of dry ranch dressing mix. I also added some fresh rosemary from my garden. I think this casserole needs the sharp cheddar, not mild cheddar, for the extra flavor boost along with the Ranch dressing mix.

Because I’d never made it before, I more or less followed the directions. I did add the rosemary. (We were having barbecued butterflied leg of lamb, so I thought the rosemary would be a nice complement.) I also cooked the onions first, which wasn’t mentioned in the original recipe. And I cut down on the amount of butter by about half.

The finished dish was wonderful. Next time I will try it with low-fat sour cream, the reduced fat soup, but I don’t think I’ll stint on the cheese. It took about 7-8 minutes to put together the ingredients. I finally used my hands to mix it up – it just seemed easier than fumbling with two big spoons. It’s a little awkward getting the soup and sour cream to mix in thoroughly. You don’t want clumps of condensed soup anywhere. Then you pour it into a casserole dish, add 45 minutes to bake, and it’s done. This may have been the first time in my life I ever bought frozen hash browns, but they sure did make it simple. I’ll definitely make this again for a big crowd. I doubled the recipe and it served 9 for one meal and probably would serve another 4-6 for another meal.
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A week or two ago I mentioned Hugh Carpenter, a very talented chef, author and restaurant consultant. I think his name cropped up in the Los Angeles Times Food Section one year (this was back in the mid-80’s) because he was consulting with several new restaurants, helping them develop their menus and specifically the food. Back then he was really into Asian food, but was one of the early advocates of fusion – Asian fusion – Pan-Asian, or Pan-Californian. We zipped up to L.A. on several occasions to try the food in these restaurant establishments and were very interested in the food combinations and layers of flavor. He lives up in wine country, but must spend some time in L.A. So when Carpenter began teaching at the Bristol Farms facility in South Pasadena, I drove up there to take some classes. I was impressed. He’s a very engaging, entertaining guy, high energy and skinny as a rail. Still is. He must not eat a lot of the food he prepares, or else he’s one of those kind of guys who has a very natural high metabolism. His wife, Teri Sandison, was there with him, and we learned that she helped in the kitchen, but her angle was pottery. More than one of the Carpenter cookbooks contains nothing but his wife’s plates, platters, bowls, etc. and she’s listed as a co-author.

This recipe was from one of the classes, although it could have been from a more recent one rather than years ago. I’m not sure, nor do I know which of his cookbooks this is from. I’ve made it several times, and it seemed very appropriate today since we’re going to an afternoon barbecue with a group of friends. All I do know is that it’s tasty. I happen to love watercress. It has a peppery tang that dances on my tongue. It’s a little difficult to find these days . . . I don’t know why, but it is. The salad is different (because of the jicama, the watercress, and the abundance of pecans), crunchy (also because of the jicama), and the dressing is a cloud of flavor with every bite (unique because of fresh lime juice and honey). But you just gotta use the walnut or pecan oil. Under no circumstances should you substitute olive oil or even vegetable oil. Actually I don’t think I’ve ever seen pecan oil, but walnut oil isn’t too hard to find these days. Just remember to keep the oil in the refrigerator – it doesn’t have a long shelf life at room temp. Give yourself ample time for all the chopping and mincing. I think it takes about an hour from start to finish, but it’s good to chill everything before actually serving, so if possible, allow an extra hour for that.
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For me, serving a variety of vegetables is the spice of life. I can always sauté zucchini with a little onion and garlic and call that the veggie side for a dinner. But other times I really like finding new and different ways to make vegetables. Hence this recipe. Some people don’t like Ina Garten. I don’t really understand why, because every dish I’ve tried of hers has turned out very well. Agreed, the woman has made millions with her TV Food Network show, and her cookbooks, but I have concluded that she is a great cook. My friend Linda gave me Ina’s book Barefoot in Paris. This recipe comes from that book, and I’ve made this about 5 times in recent months.

What I really like about the dish – other than the fabulous taste – is that you only dirty up two pans to make it. Even though you may think a gratin might be complicated, you make it in a large sauté pan and pour it into a baking dish, so this absolutely is NOT complex or difficult. I guarantee it. So, here are the stages:

1. You can do the slicing by hand, but this is what I do. First I dug out my Oxo mandoline. I may only use this every two weeks, but when I do I fall in love with it all over again. It makes slicing so incredibly easy.
2. I sliced up the onion and got that cooking in my large sauté pan. Meanwhile, I sliced up all the beautiful farmstand zucchini I bought a few hours before. It took me about 5 minutes total to slice everything. Then I added that to the pan and cooked it for a short time.
3. Then I add the flour, salt, pepper, freshly grated nutmeg to the pan, then the hot milk and in a jiffy you have the thickened dish ready to go. You pour the whole thing into a large baking dish.

4. Do you know Panko? I’d heard of it, but never bothered to buy it. I said – gee, it’s just bread crumbs, right? That was until a few years ago when a cooking instructor served it on a
chicken dish, and I was amazed at how good it was. It’s not that the Panko crumbs have a lot of taste. They don’t, because they’re simply a bread product, a Japanese bread product to be specific, chopped up very fine. But, it stays crispy throughout the cooking, so there is something they do differently to make it act like that. That’s what’s so unique about Panko, and I use it regularly now. Trader Joe’s carries it under their own label (see package picture below); otherwise most major grocery stores also have it, usually in the Asian food section. So you mix the Panko with grated Gruyere or Parmesan (I have always used the latter), sprinkle it on top, bake and you’re done.

The casserole will sit for awhile waiting to be baked, or you can refrigerate it earlier in the day too. It’s a very forgiving recipe in all respects. Less zucchini? No problem. Not much cheese? No problem. Only have fat-free milk? No problem. You have yellow squash instead? No problem. You get the drift.

Our friends, Bud & Cherrie (my cohort in crime at many cooking classes) came for dinner last night, and the amount I made should have served at least 6 people. Hmmm. Guess what? We four slicked it up clean. You need to try this recipe; you’ll be very glad you did.

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Credit must go to my daughter, Sara, for this recipe. She read it in one of my issues of Gourmet Magazine, when we were trying to figure out what to make for dinner one evening. Our families were together, and she recalled reading this recipe. We tried it, and it’s been a fixture on my summertime menu ever since. It really could be made any time of year, but seems like it goes so well with grilled meats, even though it’s done completely in the oven.

Although the preparation is simple, you do have to be hanging around in the kitchen off and on for the better part of 2 hours. It’s amazing that onion halves in a 400° oven take nearly 2 hours to settle into soft silkiness, but they do. Don’t skimp on the olive oil as it definitely enhances the flavor, and don’t allow the pan to dry out because the wine and oil will definitely burn. Generally I add a bit more red wine and always have to add additional water towards the end of the baking time. If you don’t have fresh thyme, you may use dried. Be generous with the herbs.
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This could be another garlic post. But it’s not. Although there certainly is garlic in this dish. I think it’s the combination of garlic and lemon juice that gives it the tart and tangy flavor. The carrots, when cooked, become mellow, so it’s a perfect foil for the dressing.

I prefer this served cold or better yet, at room temperature. It will keep for at least a week, so I suggest doubling or tripling the recipe. You’ll be very glad to have some leftovers to serve at another meal.

On one California road trip I bought this cookbook: The Good Cook’s Book of Oil and Vinegar by Michele Anna Jordan (it’s no longer in print, but if you’re intrigued you can find a used copy). She focuses in on specifics about all kinds of oils and various vinegars, and she knows her stuff. I’ve used a number of recipes from the book over the years, but this is probably my favorite. And it’s easy. The toughest job is slicing the carrots. In the picture above I cut them much thicker than usual (note to self: re-read the recipe before I begin!). I prefer them when they are very thinly sliced, so use your mandoline or food processor slicing blade if you have one. The benefit of the thin slice is that more of the dressing permeates the carrots. And do give the carrots time to marinate in the dressing – it’s much better. And for goodness’ sake, don’t overcook the carrots. You don’t want to be eating carrot mush, and the thinner the carrot slices, the greater the risk of overcooking. Oh yes, I almost forgot, whatever you do, do not use those abominable “baby” carrots in the little bags. You know, don’t you, that those really are not baby carrots – they’re big carrots trimmed down to look like baby carrots. I prefer using young carrots, but even medium sized ones will work fine in this recipe.
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Since today I’m posting a recipe that came from another blogger, I thought I’d explain a bit about how I got to doing this blog in the first place. Sometime last Fall I read an article in a magazine that listed the URL addresses for about 4-5 food blogs. I’d never heard of a blog before that. I took a look at them and found I was reading their entire blogs, sometimes years in the past. I was fascinated. Mesmerized. Greedy for more. Hooked on more and more blogs. Nearly every food blog has a list of other food blogs that those bloggers read (sometimes called a “blog roll”), and I quickly began looking at all of those too. Then I heard about Google Reader and decided to give that a try. Once you have a Google account you access the Reader and as you find blogs you want to read (the blogs have an RSS feed, it’s called) you simply add them to a subscription within Google Reader. Then I added the Google Reader to my Favorites so it’s only two clicks away and I now have a list of all the blogs I frequent. I don’t have to go to each individual blog site. New postings show up within Reader when they’ve been updated. They’re viewable in a shortened version, usually, and if I want to see the full read, then I click on over to see the actual website itself. Otherwise, I read the blog from the Reader.

As I read the stories other people wrote, I was intrigued, but kept talking myself out of being a blogger. It looked like it would take too much time. Writing stories every day??? How could I fit that into my busy schedule? And doing photos all the time? Whoa! Yes, I have a digital camera, but I don’t have photos of most of my recipe collection (which now numbers over 400). Most of the bloggers use a free blog service. The only limitation is whatever the provider allows in html conversion. I know nothing-zippo–nada about writing computer language (htm and html) which is actually how these stories get into the ether so you can view it. I type into a limited word processing kind of window, and I can add photos and links, make something bold or italic, but that’s about all I can do. My words and photos get converted into html and somehow, magically, when I click the button called “publish” it appears on the website. One of my photos graces the top of the blog, and I can add elements, they are called, like my list of books I’m reading. Then I upload the pdf to my website – I output the recipe from within my MasterCook recipe program (more on that in another post) and print it to a pdf file, then upload it to my website. The link is available, so I paste that into a hyperlink, and when you click on that, at the bottom of each post, you get my pdf file from my recipe collection.

So six months have gone by since I began following the long list of bloggers I read, and suddenly one day I decided I wanted to do this too. I’ve always wanted to write, but never found a niche that was right for me. I don’t have the creative bent to actually write fiction, but explaining cooking, or telling stories about our travels and food, etc. would be a cinch. I just hope I won’t become too long winded and you folks out there get bored reading my stuff.

Only one other thing: at the top is a line to make a COMMENT. That’s a place for you to add something. Any of you who would like to comment, I’d be very appreciative. Otherwise I have no clue whether my posts are even being read. I’ve subscribed to a free service (Feedburner) that is supposed to give me stats on my readers.

So, now on to today’s recipe. One of the early bloggers in blogdom, I suspect, is Kalyn’s Kitchen. Kalyn Denny lives in Salt Lake City and is an avid advocate of the South Beach diet, which works for her. Her recipes are usually low on carbs, and she uses a lot of vegetables, which I like. I’ve been trying to incorporate more vegetables into our diet. We eat them every day anyway, but now I’m often making two vegetables and a protein with no carbs except those contained in the natural vegetables themselves. Since Dave is a Type 1 diabetic and has been for nearly 60 years (yes, really), he needs to watch carbs – at least count them carefully to calculate how much insulin to take at each meal – and it doesn’t hurt me a bit to reduce carbs either.

Now don’t get me wrong. I really, really like vegetables. But cauliflower wasn’t up there on my yes-list at all. So, until this and one other recipe, cauliflower wasn’t one of the vegetables I prepared very often. Steamed, plain cauliflower is not something I’d ever order. I eat it because I know I should, but not usually with much interest. So when I read Kalyn’s recipe for the vegetable with bacon and mushrooms, I thought ah-ha. I like mushrooms. Bacon is something I like a lot too, and have found that even half of a slice of bacon can impart tons of flavor. I buy lean, thick sliced bacon without sulfates (Niman Ranch is probably the best, available at Trader Joe’s and I also buy some from Whole Foods that’s without additives). Normally I buy a package, use a slice or two, then roll up each remaining bacon slice and freeze them individually on a cookie sheet, then pile them into a Ziploc bag to pop back in the freezer. It takes no time at all to defrost a slice of bacon.

As I prepare this dish (I’ve made it innumerable times in the last 6 months) I have a very hard time keeping my fingers out of the pan. As the cauliflower begins to brown, I just have to test it often – you know – to find out if it’s the correct texture of done-ness, right? This is best eaten just after making it. Although I have reheated it, it gets a bit soggy. So, try to make just enough for the one meal. I also have added garlic to this and enjoyed it too.
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