It’s been decades since I made this pie. And it’s SO easy to prepare (well, IF you have frozen pie crusts standing by). You can buy Bosc pears year ‘round now, so anytime could be pear pie season.

A few weeks ago I made an astounding pear cobbler I wrote up about just a few days ago. I don’t exactly post my recipes in order as I make them, but that pear cobbler made me think about a recipe I hadn’t made for decades, my Mom’s pear pie. I had to go hunting for the recipe – it was in my little orange binder that I used when I first began to have enough recipes to save. Some of the recipes in there are in my mother’s handwriting, though this one was not – my mom must have kind of dictated it to me. It’s hardly a recipe, so I had to write it a bit better for posting here.

The pear cobbler is long gone – I served it to a group and it all disappeared except for one serving that’s in my freezer. But it certainly did resonate in my palate, telling me to eat more pears. Then, in the interim I either read or heard from somewhere that when you’re baking pears, the best ones to use are Bosc. Well, it was too late; I’d already bought 4 Bartlett pears with the thought that I’d make this pear pie. I also bought a package of 2 Marie Callender’s pie crust shells (frozen). I know they’re good; good enough for this pie, for sure. I don’t bake pies very often – always because making the crust is just such a nuisance. That will forever be changed now that Marie’s pie shells are available. Whoopee! I have a number of pies I’d like to make, some that date back to the 60s that I’ve never bothered to include here on my blog. I’d also like to update two pies that are old favorites.

So, this pie. I don’t know the history of it, other than I know it was my mother’s mother’s recipe. My grandmother’s name was Isis, and she was a very good baker. She and my grandfather lived all their lives on a farm in the central valley here in California – in Stanislaus (pronounced STAN-is-law) County, near Modesto. My grandmother cooked 3 meals a day for the entirety of their marriage, I imagine. There were years when there was almost no money (my mother went to junior college, then worked and HAD to send money home to her parents because they might have lost the farm altogether). She had 2 older brothers and 2 sisters, and I expect they may have sent money home too if they had extra during those skim depression years. I have a number of recipes from my grandmother Isis. I recently bought some apricots, thinking I’d make an old time recipe for an apricot cobbler. That recipe might have belonged to my great aunt. Not sure.

Anyway, this pear pie is just so easy to make. I had 4 Bartlett pears (use Bosc if you have them) and after peeling them I just sliced them directly into the frozen pie crust. See photo above. They were quite juicy – maybe too juicy. Then I mixed up the “filling,” which was merely sugar, a little bit of flour, an egg and a jot of vanilla. That was stirred up and drizzled all over the top of the pears. See photo at right. I used a spatula to kind of help the topping/filling to cover most of the pears. Then I dotted the top with butter and into a hot oven it went for about 10 minutes. Then the temp was turned down to 325° and baked for another 35-45 minutes, until the filling was golden brown and set.

Letting it cool was essential, and it held onto the heat for quite a while. My mother almost always served this with whipped cream, but you could also use vanilla ice cream. I intended to sprinkle the top of the pears with cardamom, but forgot in my rush to get the topping on the pears. I did use almond flavoring rather than vanilla, however.

Photo here shows the pie with butter dotting the top, ready to go into the oven. I thought this might have been a Betty Crocker recipe, but no. I just searched for it and this is nothing like any of Betty’s pear pies. I’d guess it’s a depression-era recipe because it calls for no other ingredients like sour cream or even any spices. The sugar mixes with the egg and the presumption is that any of the juices from the pears will firm up with the flour added into the filling/topping. The eggy mixture does slip down between the layers of pears and surrounds the pears.

I enjoyed 2 slices, then gave the rest of it to my neighbors, who have 2 little girls with hungry appetites. Both girls do swimming and water polo – the mom is a full time “bus” driver for the girls.

What’s GOOD: if you’re looking for straight-forward pear taste, this is it. Nothing else, really, to distract your taste buds – pears, sugar, a little flour, an egg, flavoring and butter dotting the top. That’s all there is to it. It’s very juicy – if you use Bosc they may not be quite so much so. I actually liked it plain with no topping at all.

What’s NOT: really nothing – it’s easy to make if you have already made pie  shells, or will buy frozen ones. It took about 10-15 minutes to put it all together and stick it in the oven.

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Can I just say, this was one of the best-est dishes I’ve eaten of late. I feel like I’d like to devour that entire platter. What is it? Multi-colored carrots roasted, then tossed with a unique kind of dressing that contains raisins, hazelnuts and thyme. It’s serve with Greek yogurt and sumac flecked pita chips (at left on the platter).

Some weeks ago I attended a cooking class where this was prepared. I took pictures, but they didn’t come out all that well, so lo, and behold, another blogger, Adde of thisishowicook.com made this lovely dish and kindly has let me share HER photo she took when she made it. I’ll be making this sometime soon, then I’ll take my own photos. Thanks, Adde.

This masterpiece isn’t hard. But it does take a bit of time to do – the carrots need to be prepped (easy) then tossed with oil and spices and they’re roasted for about 30 minutes. Also not hard, but then you want to make the pita chips slathered with some oil and peppered with sumac and baked/toasted in the oven for 12-15 minutes. Then, the mixture you eventually toss with the carrots must be prepped – raisins, nuts, thyme, sumac cooked in a bit of butter. Once the carrots are done, you toss them with this raisin mixture and you platter them. Now, I think Adde did it according to the original Sunset recipe – yogurt on the bottom, then the carrots and pita chips. Our instructor put the carrots down first, then plopped Greek yogurt on top. Your choice as to how you do it.

What I will tell you for sure – this dish is off the charts. The carrots become soft and succulent and take on such a lovely sweetness from the caramelization going on during the roasting. The combo of raisins and hazelnuts is brilliant – I’d never have put those two together, nor combine them with carrots! Then you complement them with the yogurt and pita chips. Oh yum.

This can be served as an appetizer, using the sumac pita chips as your scoop, but it would be best to have small plates and forks as the carrots might be a bit difficult to eat. Or, in the class I attended, the chef served it as a side dish with chicken, which was also very lovely.

What’s GOOD: Oh my gosh. I just couldn’t get enough of this – probably it’s the sugar/sweet taste of the carrots, but complemented by the raisins and hazelnuts just makes this dish unctuous.

What’s NOT: well, you can’t throw this together in 30 minutes – it takes a bit longer. Hopefully you have hazelnuts on hand, and Greek yogurt AND the sumac. And pita bread rounds and multi-colored carrots. For me, this will require a special trip to the grocery store to make sure I have everything.

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Can I see frowns on your faces? Curry? Oh, I don’t like curry, you say, skip this recipe. Well, you’ll be missing out if you don’t at least try it. There is so little curry in this you can’t exactly identify it. Yet it adds a very elusive flavor.

A couple of weeks ago (when I made this) I’d just gotten home from a 5-day trip to Northern California to visit Taylor, my granddaughter who’s attending Sonoma State, and my daughter Dana and her family near Placerville. Once home from the trip I knew I needed to use up some things in my refrigerator and a head of cauliflower was first on the list.

And actually, when I threw together a dinner the next night (you know how it is – you get back from a trip – there’s laundry to do, phone calls to return, mail to go through, bills to pay) and I didn’t have much time to cook dinner. And it wasn’t even in my mind that the recipe would be worthy of a post here on the blog. I just needed a quick dinner and I’d get back to the things that needed doing.

I drizzled some canola oil into a frying pan and then added a bit of butter too. While it was heating up I quick-like sliced and chopped up the cauliflower. The pieces that I sliced were the ones that had more of the caramelization, so I’d vote for doing a lot of slicing rather than floret-ing. I grabbed my bunch of cilantro and twisted off a little chunk to mince. Once the pan was just about smoking (be careful as the butter could burn, and you don’t want that) I threw in the cauliflower, turned the heat down just a bit, turned on the overhead fan and let those pieces caramelize. It doesn’t take long – there is a fine line, though, between hot and burning. It took very little time to get those pieces of cauliflower to brown. I tossed and stirred, along with the bit of dried thyme I sprinkled over it. Once browned to my liking, I added some water to the pan, on went a lid and I let it steam for about a minute. Just a minute. Then I sprinkled on the curry powder, salt and pepper. I tasted a piece because I did want the cauliflower to be done. Oh my goodness was it delicious – so into that little bowl it went – and I took a photo.

As it happened I only cooked a half of a head of cauliflower, but shall I just confess? I ate it all. Every single bit. Does that tell you how wonderful it was? In my defense, I will say that it was a small half head!

What’s GOOD: If you read my last sentence, I ate a half of a cauliflower when I made this. The entire amount. It was that good. The curry powder (I use Madras because I like that type, but you can use any curry powder) isn’t predominating by a long shot. In fact, you can hardly taste it. If you want to make it more special, throw in some pine nuts. Toast those in the frying pan during the last minute of cooking. You could add some turmeric too. If you don’t like cilantro, add some Italian parsley (it was as much for color as anything else). If your family doesn’t much like cauliflower, they might like it this way. The vegetable almost tastes sweet – caramelization or roasting does that to a lot of vegetables.

What’s NOT: not a thing. I love cauliflower, so it was a no-brainer that I’d enjoy it. I just didn’t know how MUCH I’d enjoy it!

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How much more Spring-y could you get for a salad than with green peas? A very simple salad of peas, radishes sliced super thin, some sugar snaps and a light olive oil and lemon juice dressing. AND with fresh mint and parsley.

As it happened, I had a small dinner for Easter with son Powell and his family. They had just returned from skiing in Colorado that day, so we had a simple dinner at my house with leg of lamb, roasted root veggies, this pea salad, and a lemon dessert. I prepared the lamb in my sous vide. After 10 hours in the 134° water bath, it was cooked well, although I’d have liked a little bit more pink. It was barely so. Good though. I’m not going to share the recipe since I doubt that many of you have a sous vide. If you do, and want the recipe, email me.

Since I’m retired and home during the day if I’m not out and about, I do occasionally watch daytime TV. The week before Easter I watched an episode of The Chew. It was their pre-Easter show and this salad just jumped out of the TV screen at me. Although, I did change it up a bit. I tried it Carla Hall’s way, but it just didn’t have any zing (to me, anyway), so I added in some lemon juice and some sliced sugar snap peas.

Carla’s recipe called for fresh peas, and although they had them at my local markets, I just don’t trust them – frozen peas are SO much easier and reliable. So I merely defrosted some. Radishes were sliced on the mandolin and dropped into ice water so they’d crisp up. Sugar snaps were de-stringed and sliced. Mint and Italian parsley chopped fine, and at the last minute I tossed it all together with good extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper. It seemed to lack something, so I added in some lemon juice and more salt and it was ready. The leftover salad lost some of its color (from the lemon juice) and didn’t have much appeal.  The radishes had lost all of their crispness and the herbs were totally wilted. I sent the family home with enough lamb, veggies and salad for them to have another meal. I have at least one meal for myself too.

What’s GOOD: I loved the “fresh” part of a pea salad. It was easy to make, though there was a bit of slicing and mincing. But most of it could be done ahead and the salad combined just before serving. Adjust the lemon juice to your taste. I used Meyer lemon juice, which is sweeter, so if using regular lemons, taste before adding too much. It was a great side for lamb.

What’s NOT: not so good for leftovers – the green peas lost some of their color with the acid in the dressing. And the salad was kind of sad – wilted and not very zippy as leftovers. Eaten right after making it, it was a stellar recipe.

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What a lovely side dish this is – or it could be a vegetarian entrée, it’s so filling and complete with nutrition! Technically, I  used golden raisins since I didn’t have any currants. It was just fabulous!

Looking for a variety-packed side dish (a carb) to serve with the big family dinner I did recently, I decided to try this wild  and basmati rice (my favorite kind of white rice) side salad. My cousin, who has to eat GF, was all over it (1 1/2 teaspoons of flour is called for in the recipe, to coat the onion topping, so I used his GF flour instead). My D-I-L thought it was a great find, and one she could make and pack small cups into her son’s lunch. I don’t think anyone didn’t like it, and I certainly heard only positive descriptors, so I’d say this dish was a hit. I’d definitely make it again.

Wild rice features in this, and I used one of those already-cooked packets. If you don’t have that, just make it from scratch as instructed in the recipe.

RICE CONUNDRUM: The rice is a bit of a perplexing method. Well, let’s just say that I doubted the accuracy of the recipe when I began making it . . . for over 2 cups of white rice you used just 1 1/2 cups of water? Eh what? Surely I thought that was a typo. You need more water than rice, making it in a traditional method. I went back to the recipe in Jerusalem: A Cookbook by Yotam Ottalenghi. Nope, it was right. So I went on the ‘net, thinking there would be others who had posted this recipe. Yes, but the few there all showed using the same amount of water. I went to Ottolenghi’s website, thinking there might be an errata page (book errors), but no, there wasn’t. I went to my food chemistry book, Harold McGee’s small encyclopedia, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. He has no less than 6 pages of info about rice (no recipes) and in one section it did elaborate that different cultures/cuisines use different proportions of water (no specifics) and he briefly discussed the Middle East’s penchant for flavorings, and the use of oil and butter. No help there. I did a google search on “how to slow steam rice” and that brought up about 100 slow-cooker methods. I took out the “slow” and then got dozens of youtube links to show me exactly how to steam rice. Not what I needed. I even went to the publisher’s website (Random House) hoping for an errata page. I couldn’t find one. What’s with that? Publishers always used to have an errata page.

So, what did I do? I cooked the rice according to the directions, but were I to make this again, I would increase the water by about half. Usually rice needs twice as much water to rice. I’d make it with 1 1/2 times the amount of water to see if that works. The rice is slow-slow cooked on the cooktop – I used my risottos cooker on its slow cooker setting and in the allotted 15 minutes it ran out of water. I let it sit for a bit, thinking that the grains would cook a bit more. I tasted it. It was okay – just a bit crunchy. Surprise. And yet, to me, the rice was on the firm side, for sure.

Once both rices are ready, you begin adding ingredients – herbs, spices, then the raisins. The chickpeas (garbanzos) are sautéed in some oil and spices too (so the flavorings stick to the beans) and those are added in. The onion is a common thread in Middle Eastern rice and grain salads, and not just onion added to the carb, but prepared separately. I didn’t deep fry the onion as the recipe indicated as I was using my cousin’s GF flour and wasn’t certain how it would react to frying, so I just used a few tablespoons of oil and did it that way. Next time I think I’d make more onions and I’d caramelize them, since that adds so much flavor. And I’d leave out the flour – some people made the onions like onion rings, but I prefer the full-bodied flavor of caramelized onions and would mix them in. I added in a bit more olive oil at the end because I thought the dish was very (too) dry, but you can go without that.

What’s GOOD: this was a wonderful side dish. I still question the quantity of water to rice and will alter the recipe if/when I make it again. The flavors were wonderful. The golden raisins (or currants) add such a surprise taste in the savory rice. It’s colorful and everyone liked it a lot.

What’s NOT: it does take a bit more time than some dishes, but none of it was difficult or all that time consuming. If I made caramelized onions next time, THAT would take some extra time.

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If you’re looking for an elegant and over-the-top taste in a side vegetable, this is your ticket to success! Rich? Yes. Hard? No, not really, though it does take some prep work. Delicious? Absolutely!

Looking on my own blog archives, I see that I posted a similar gratin a year ago, a recipe that Phillis Carey made for a Butternut Squash & Caramelized Onion Gratin. That one is only butternut squash. This one, made by Diane Phillips at a cooking class I went to last month (and have since made myself) contains both butternut squash and potatoes in about equal measure. Phillis’ recipe used only Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, whereas this one uses Gruyere mostly, with a little bit of Parmigiano in it. Although Diane cooks global cuisines, she often does Italian food as her heritage is Italian, and she and her husband spend part of every year there.

But this dish, I think, is more French than Italian. There’s nothing much in it that rings of Italy except the Parmigiano, and nothing particular that rings French except the Gruyere, so I can’t pinpoint. Gratins are usually French, however!

There’s the casserole just before it went into the oven. Both butternut squash and Yukon potatoes (sliced on my mandoline at about 3/8 “ thick) are gently simmered in milk and cream until nearly done, then poured into an oiled baking dish, covered with a mixture of the cheeses and baked for about 45 minutes. Diane suggested 1/2” slices, but my mandoline only goes up to 3/8”, so that’s what this was – it may have cooked in less time, but otherwise there was no difference between mine and Diane’s. It also has a leek in it, some garlic, fresh thyme too. And if you’re feeling feisty, add some squirts of Tabasco (I didn’t when I made it just because there were children eating it).

Once baked it’s nice to let it sit out to cool just a bit – no question – if you had a bite of this straight from the oven you’d burn your mouth, so do let it rest for 5-10 minutes before digging into it. I took this to a family Christmas Eve dinner (the one above) and had a 2nd casserole that had enough for Christmas Day dinner as well. I reconfigured the recipe to serve 16 and it served more than that, I think. The casserole isn’t all that thick/deep, but because it’s rich, you don’t want to serve large portions. With a well-rounded dinner, I think this recipe below would feed 10 for sure, as long as nobody was doing seconds or taking a gigantic serving. Hungry teenagers? Well, it might only feed 6!

What’s GOOD: the combo of butternut squash and potatoes is sublime – the textures are different – but the mix produces a rich, silky casserole that’s everything you’d ever want in a beautiful, elegant side vegetable to a special occasion meal.

What’s NOT: well, only that it’s rich (it does contain heavy cream and ample grated cheese). But hey, it’s just one very special dish, not a regular weeknight kind of thing. It does take a bit of prep, but if you have a slicer or mandoline, it made quick work of the prep. I thought it was easier than expected.

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There are a lot of recipes on this-here blog for green beans. I like them. I’ll eat them any old way, even steamed with a sprinkling of Butter Buds on them. But making something different with them is definitely my preference.

Last month at Phillis Carey’s bonanza “Diva” cooking class she made a kind of a southwest dinner. I have yet to share the star of her group of recipes – the pork tenderloin. Soon. Meanwhile, I wanted to make this green bean recipe. All for me. Just me. I’ve now had 3 meals with them and I still have some left over. They go a long way.

You know what tomatillos are, right?  There at left – they’re a Mexican fruit-like vegetable – they kind of look like green tomatoes, but they grow with a paper-like covering over them (probably to protect the tender flesh from the hot sun). You peel the covering off, wash them well (because they develop a kind of sticky residue on them) and cut them up. They’re TART. Lemony in a way. You wouldn’t eat them straight away – pucker power for sure. But they’re used frequently in all manner of Mexican cooking.

Phillis gave us the recipe for making a tomatillo salsa from scratch, but she said if you didn’t want to do that part, just buy a jar of tomatillo salsa or tomatillo verde at the grocery store. That’s what I did, Herdez brand. That saved a bunch of work. Some markets have fresh tomatillo salsa on the refrigerated shelves, at least here in SoCal. But the jarred stuff works fine.

To the jarred salsa I added some additional cumin and lime juice. Phillis’ recipe calls for a red onion. I didn’t have one, so I used a yellow onion instead. The green beans are simmered in water until they’re nearly done. Meanwhile you cook the sliced onion in vegetable oil until the strands are limp, then you add in the drained green beans and the tomatillo salsa. I decided to add something that’s likely not traditional – a bit of sour cream. It cut the acidity of the salsa a little bit and added a nice richness to them. There’s very little sour cream in them. You could try it without that too, which would be true to the original recipe. I added fresh cilantro to the finished dish, just because I could. I like cilantro in most things.

What’s GOOD: certainly this is a different kind of preparation of green beans – not a common method, with the tomatillos in it. The dish is tart, piquant. The sour cream softens it a little bit. If you or your family don’t like the tart flavor, leave out the lime juice (the jarred salsa may have enough) and add just a little bit of sugar. This makes a nice dinner presentation for a side veggie. A gussied-up veggie. It keeps for several days.

What’s NOT: nothing, really. It’s a lovely veggie. Different. Maybe not to everyone’s taste.

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We still have some fairly nice tomatoes at our farmer’s markets, and even in the grocery stores. Do make this if you still have some with bright, fresh available produce.

Last month one of my book clubs chose to read Delancey: A Man, a Woman, a Restaurant, a Marriage , the memoir written by Molly Wizenberg, of Orangette fame (her blog that I’ve been reading for years). It’s a very cute book – about Molly’s journey from single woman, to meeting the man of her dreams and then the rocky road of opening a pizza restaurant in Seattle. The rocky road was about pouring all their hard earned savings into it, even when Molly wasn’t so sure it was a good idea, but she wanted to support her hubby in fulfilling HIS dream of making pizza like he remembered from a Brooklyn restaurant that makes, to this day, some amazing pizza (so we read in the book, anyway). Delancey was almost an overnight success (fortunately) but it was almost Molly’s undoing. She tells it all, sharing her innermost fears almost from day one.

Our book club doesn’t usually read food related books, or restaurant memoirs, so I was surprised when Peggy suggested it. Not that I didn’t want to read the book – I did – but wasn’t sure the other gals in the group, who aren’t all foodies necessarily, would. But yet, the book isn’t all about food – it’s about Molly’s journey. And interspersed in the book are recipes. This one you won’t find on her blog, Orangette. That’s kind of a cardinal rule in blogging – if you’re one of the fortunates, who has become a published author, you don’t write up the book recipes on the blog – why would people buy the book then?

Peggy & her husband Gary came to one of our gourmet group dinners recently, and she brought the salad – the one we’d read about in the book. And gosh, was it ever good. It’s a sterling recipe for showcasing good tomatoes. Don’t even think about making this if you can’t find good tomatoes and cherry tomatoes. These days we seem to be able to get corn on the cob year ‘round, so that’s not a problem. And basil is ever present too. It’s just the tomatoes you’ll have to be careful about.

The shallot vinaigrette is shaken in a glass jar – nothing difficult about it, and any left overs will keep for a few days. I was delighted to use the dressing on a salad a few days later. And actually the tomatoes themselves, the ones left over from the dinner, were still glorious 2 days later since they’d marinated in the dressing. Peggy said she added a little more salt and sugar to the dressing, so I’ve included that change in the recipe below. Taste the dressing to make sure it meets your approval – and add more sugar if it tastes too tart. Molly suggested having fresh bread to mop up the good juices – we didn’t do that, and I wished we’d had some, but we had a full meal without having any bread. This might make a lovely lunch salad with some bread.

What’s GOOD: it’s an easy recipe to make – it’s all about the tomatoes. But yet, the corn adds a very nice texture to the salad. There isn’t all that much of the corn, but it’s a lovely addition. And then, the shallot vinaigrette is really, really good. Nothing all that unusual about it, but I thought it was perfect for the tomatoes. It will keep a day or so, although I wouldn’t serve it to guests after the first time probably. Definitely a keeper.

What’s NOT: only if you can’t get good tomatoes – don’t even try making this if that’s the case.

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Although this could be a vegetable side dish, I made it as my dinner entrée the other night. It was absolutely delicious. And filling. And relatively good for me (however, there’s some milk in it – just a little – and some cheese – and some butter).

Seems like I’m not as good as I used to be at planning ahead. In this case it was planning for my own dinner. So, I hadn’t defrosted any chicken, or fish, or whatever – and by the time I thought about it, it was after 5 pm. But, I did have some fresh vegetables in the crisper.

This is a riff on an Ina Garten recipe that I’ve posted here on my blog already – zucchini gratin. (That dish was a favorite of my darling DH and I haven’t made this since he passed away last year.) It’s a very simple recipe to make – cooking some onion and zucchini, pouring it into a casserole dish and topping it with panko and grated cheeses. What I had in my refrigerator were yellow crookneck and sugarsnap peas. I always have some corn in the freezer too. And I’d bought some Fontina cheese (a good melting cheese) and I always have some Parmigiano-Reggiano in the refrigerator also. First the onion is chopped up fine, cooked in butter, and while that’s cooking you slice up the squash – very thin actually. I have a small hand-held mandoline with 4 settings on it – I used the thickest, which is still pretty thin. All that’s added in and it gets cooked over low heat for about 8-10 minutes until the squash is just about cooked through. I’d chopped up some sugar snaps and found the corn in the freezer. That was cooked just slightly, then it’s seasoned with salt, pepper and nutmeg (and a little flour), then some milk is added to make a very light creamy sauce. Then it all was poured into a wide gratin pan. Then I grated the cheeses and tossed that with the panko crumbs. That got sprinkled on top and into a 400° oven it went and baked for about 20 minutes until the crumbs were golden brown and the vegetables were bubbling. I got two small casseroles out of the mixture, so I have another dinner of it in the near future. I’ll heat it in the toaster oven and turn it on to broil at the last minute to crisp up the crumbs.

What’s GOOD: a vegetable gratin is always delicious in my book. And since I love summer squash anyway, it’s a given I’d love this. The original recipe called for Gruyere cheese, and I think it probably has a bit more character (flavor) than the Fontina, but it was good anyway. I nearly licked the pan (not really) if that gives you an indication of how good it was. It’s comfort food.

What’s NOT: It does take a bit of work (mincing and slicing stuff) but it all comes together easily enough. From start to finish (out of the oven) took about 45 minutes, I guess.

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Something just a tad bit different. A riff on a standard Southern dish. Zucchini cloaked in a light custard, grated cheese added and cheese cracker crumbs sprinkled on top. Easy.

Have you ever read a recipe, thought you’d saved it and didn’t? Then 2 days later you go looking for it and can’t find it. That’s me. I was SURE I’d saved the recipe – I’d found it on somebody’s blog. Went to the 2 blogs I thought it must have been, but nope. Not there. So what’s a cook to do except hunt around on the ‘net for another one.

This recipe is very similar to hundreds. Squash casserole is ubiquitous in the South. Most of them are made with yellow squash, however. You could use yellow squash in this one, but I had zucchini.

As I write this I’ve just spent the last 5 days. 4-6 hours each day, going back in my blog for the last 4 years (to mid-2011) and adding all the posted recipes from my blog into my MasterCook software. What a tedious job that was. My buns were sore from sitting. My kitten kept me company in his little bed (one of those short cat poles with a round carpeted bed on top) waiting for strokes now and then. So at least I now have a record of all my blog recipes, but have still “lost” all the saved to-try recipes. There were hundreds of them. Oh well, so many recipes out there and never enough time to try them all anyway.

So, what I had was zucchini, Fontina cheese, Pecorino and some cheesy crackers – actually they weren’t Cheez-its (I never buy those anyway) but Trader Joe’s new cheese crackers. I don’t like them particularly, but they worked fine for this recipe which I knew I was going to make which is why I bought them. I’ll likely throw out the remainder of the box because they’re not good enough to snack on. Most of the recipes use Cheddar, or even American cheese.

I had a couple of leeks, so decided to use them, although they are not traditional in this casserole. They added a nice sweetness to the custard. I lightly sautéed onion and the leeks, then added the chunky zucchini in. I cooked all that until the zucchini was almost cooked, but not quite. That got poured into a casserole dish, a custard mixture (2 eggs, 2% milk and a tetch of cream) cheese was added on top, then the crushed up cheese crackers. I added the cream because I only had 2% milk, and the recipes I read all called for whole milk. You can do it all with 2% if you’d prefer. At left is the unbaked casserole.

Into the oven it went for about 20-25 minutes until the top was a bit crusty golden brown. The cheese crackers didn’t really brown, which was fine – it’s the cheese and the egg mixture that does. I let it sit out for about 5 minutes before I scooped out a serving. I’d made some salmon for my dinner. It was dreadful. Probably the preparation was fine, but the salmon had freezer burn on it and it just tasted awful. I ate about 3 tiny bites and threw it all out. I made a chunked up salad of tomatoes, mozzarella, red bell peppers and some Italian parsley. It made up for the awful salmon. I didn’t even want to put it in my trash (I don’t use my garbage disposal much anymore because it too easily gets clogged up) because I knew it would smell something fierce. The disposal made quick work of about 1/2 pound of salmon. Sigh. At right is the finished (baked) casserole.

What’s GOOD: it’s very easy to prepare and makes a simple vegetable very elegant and tasty. I liked the custard and the cheese. And the onions & leeks also added a sweetness. I could have done without the cheese cracker crumb crust – maybe next time I’d use saltines or panko. Or maybe if I’d used Cheez-its or Pepperidge Farms’ cheesy crackers it would have tasted better. But overall, it was a great dish. It could also be a very nice vegetarian entree.

What’s NOT: only that it takes about 15-20 minutes to get it ready for the oven. A bit of chopping and mixing. But worth doing.

printer-friendly PDF and FILES: MasterCook 5+ and MasterCook 14 (click on link to open in MC)

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