Hatch chiles – so flavorful. In mild, medium and HOT. This was the display at our local Ralph’s grocery where Frieda’s staged a chile roasting event.

So, they had these monstrous round bins with a hotter-than-hot broiling element and it rotated – took just a few minutes for those chiles to roast perfectly.

Once roasted they opened the scoop and out those piping hot chiles flew. People had signed up for 10 and 25-pound roasted batches in the mild, medium or HOT category. I just didn’t think I could use 10 pounds of these, AND I’d have had to peel them too. That’s not included in the price.

If you’re someone who doesn’t know much about chiles, now you do – about this one anyway – and do seek out the Hatch. They have a unique flavor – no, it’s not all that different than other chiles, yet they’re really quite good.

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With peaches in season, this dessert is SO easy and so tasty. Only one thing – you have to have amaretti cookies on hand to make it. I had a few, actually have had about 8 of them sealed up in a vacuum bag for about a year, but when I opened it up that lovely almond flavor poured out, so I was assured they were still usable.

This is a recipe I’ve made numerous times over the years. Back in the 80’s we were in a 4-couple gourmet group that generally met for dinner for about 6-7 years, about every other month. Occasionally we would gather on our boat (back then it was in Newport harbor, not in San Diego as it is now) for a sunset sail, or in someone’s backyard for a summer brunch. I was the point-man with the group – always starting the ball rolling on when we’d meet, talking with the hostess about the calendar and menu ideas. And because everyone in the group generally didn’t want to have to decide on recipes, they relied on me to do all the menu and recipe selection. I’d create a menu of new things that I thought went together, I’d photocopy the bunch and mail out the pages to everyone a week or so before our event.

I can vaguely see (in my head) the magazine clipping I had for this recipe, but I don’t know where it came from. I did not find it on the internet, although I did find a similar one made by Giada on the Food Network, and she tops hers with whipped cream. With the name Piemontese, it means it’s a dessert from the Piemonte region of northern Italy. And since it has amaretti cookies in it, that’s another clue it’s Italian.

In a nutshell, here’s what you do: buy larger peaches if at all possible (because you need a bigger pit-cavity to spoon the cookie mixture into), peel them with a vegetable peeler (remember, the newer Messermeister Pro Touch Swivel Peeler will peel tomatoes, peaches, nectarines easily). Cut them in half, discard the seeds, and place in a buttered baking dish. With a peach or two (you use a third of the peaches for the filling), puree in a food processor, then combine with sugar, egg yolks and some crushed up Amaretti cookies. Scoop that wet mixture into the center of the peaches, dot with butter (yes, butter) and bake for  about 30 minutes until the tops are golden brown. I had white fleshed peaches that were on the smaller side, so it made it a bit harder to fill the small cavities with the peach, egg and amaretti mixture. Some of it oozed over the edges, but the egg helps to keep in intact.

I prefer to serve the peach halves warm (not hot) so ideally bake them an hour or two before serving. You can also make them a few hours ahead and reheat them for 10 minutes in a low oven before placing them on dessert plates or in bowls and scooping a little bit of vanilla ice cream on top. If they’re warm, the ice cream melts (which is fine) or if they’ve cooled to room temp then you can add a bit more ice cream – some will soften, some won’t. Don’t overwhelm the peaches with ice cream – this dessert is all about the peaches, not the ice cream. If the peaches are large, you can serve each person just a half, especially if you give them a nice (but small) portion of ice cream alongside. If they’re medium to smaller peaches, each person should have two.

If you have trouble finding amaretti cookies (I buy mine at a specialty food store, and at some times of the year our local Italian deli has them) you can, if you want to, make your own. I’ve never done that, but surely they’re not hard. Here’s a link to Martha Stewart’s site with detailed instructions.

What’s GOOD: the lovely, sweet, succulent peaches, almost dripping in butter (but they’re not, really). Oh so very tasty. The almond scent from the amaretti cookies shines through. If you choose to put whipped cream on it, add a bit of Amaretto to the cream, which will highlight the almond flavor.
What’s NOT: gee whiz, nothing at all – only that when it’s not peach season you probably can’t have these. I have made them with extra-deluxe canned peaches, but they’re definitely not as good!

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This dish, gosh. Hard to describe without it sounding mundane, but it isn’t. And pictures hardly do it justice – purply broccoli? But, it’s delicious. It’s Sicilian, and most often when they serve it, it’s on top of a piece of amply oiled and browned rustic toast. And it’s a whole meal!

For a recent family dinner, our daughter-in-law asked me to make this dish with the minimal instructions she had, from her Aunt Pina, when she had prepared it on a recent visit. Karen’s aunt is Sicilian, and she’s an excellent cook, but I did have some difficulty interpreting the few directions. When I say minimal instructions, I mean minimal. So I went online and found a few other recipes for it, and discovered more about the dish. One Italian website (thank goodness for Google translations!) said that Affogati means drowned, but she explained that in the true sense of Sicilian-Italian, it means suffocated (because the dish is cooked completely with a lid). What a recipe title.

Most frequently Sicilians eat this as a vegetarian main dish and its quite beloved. Some make it with white wine, but mostly it’s made with red, which gives it a kind of unique color. There are variations of the theme – Karen’s Aunt makes hers without cheese, but with capers and green olives. Some make it with anchovies. Others have garlic. And raisins. All of the recipes use ample olive oil. Not just a dash or two, but several tablespoons, or at least more than you might think. And Karen’s Aunt Pina makes hers with tomato paste, which I didn’t find in any of the recipes I searched. So, you see, you can make this recipe your own, as I have.

Starting with Aunt Pina’s recipe, I adjusted and adapted it. The first time I made it according to the minimal instructions and everyone seemed to like it, but I thought it could use some adjustments. Cooking the onion first, for one thing, which would give the dish more onion character. Then, adding garlic, which is a no-brainer for me. Cooking the broccoli first with water, then adding the red wine later (I made it the 2nd time without the tomato paste) seemed like a good idea. I reduced the quantity of capers and olives (don’t use them at all if you’re at all caper or olive averse). Then the cheese. Well, what doesn’t taste better with cheese, I ask you? And Pecorino. I do love Pecorino a lot and usually I have some in my refrigerator.

So, the recipe below is my adaptation of the original recipe. If you’d prefer, do mix some tomato paste with the red wine (and mix it in very well so it’s a smooth liquid). I think the cheese added a lot, and I did find that I liked it cooked until it’s more “done” than our more common just cooked until al dente. This dish needs it to go further than that. I liked the garlic added in, and I preferred the cooking of the onions first, rather than layered into the pot raw. When I made it the 2nd time my DH was wild about it. The onions in the bottom had absorbed a lot of the red wine (so they were bright purple) which was pretty, besides being tasty. The Pecorino didn’t melt quite like I’d wanted (it clumped anywhere shreds touched one another), but the taste was wonderful.

What’s GOOD: the combo of flavors – the onions, the cheese, the broccoli. All of it good. It’s also quite easy to make.
What’s NOT: really nothing – try different cheeses if you’d prefer a softer, more melting type. Adapt the recipe to suit your tastes. It’s a good one.

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Scrumptious, smooth and loaded with flavor from the vanilla bean and the potent blackberry Zinfandel sauce on top. If you like panna cotta, you’ll love this one.

There are 2 recipes for panna cotta here on my blog. The one linked is an Ina Garten recipe that uses about equal cream and yogurt. I do have another one – a boxed mix, and not normally what I’d recommend anyway. Recently Phillis Carey made a different one – a lemon panna cotta that was fantastic. It was identical to this one except she used a blueberry sauce instead of the blackberry AND she used liquid vanilla instead of the vanilla bean. I’ll give you both recipes at the bottom. Obviously Phillis really likes the stuff – I think she’s made it 4-5 times in the last couple of years in various classes I’ve taken, all with a slightly different twist to them. But I really, REALLY liked this blackberry one. Part of why I like this is the vanilla bean, but it’s the sauce that makes it. But I also really liked the lemon one too. Obviously it was the lemon that hooked me since I’m a lemon nut. So maybe you need to make both!

All of Phillis’s recipes for panna cotta include sour cream or yogurt for part of the mixture. The sauce: you combine 2/3 of the blackberries with sugar and Zinfandel, whizz that up in the food processor. Then you strain out all the seeds so you’re left with a clear liquid. That is cooked for just a minute or so, cooled, THEN you add the remaining 1/3 of the fresh berries and just let it sit until cool.

The panna cotta itself is so easy – unflavored gelatin, lemon juice, whipping cream, sugar, salt, vanilla bean is cooked briefly, then once that has cooled some you whisk the cream mixture into the the sour cream. Pour into ramekins and chill. The topping is added just before serving.

The VANILLA BEAN one: (scroll down below for the lemon one):

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The LEMON one:

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If you’re a chili-head, then you’ll want to know about where you can buy Hatch chiles. I wrote a bit about them a year ago – I tried to go to a roasting event at a local grocery store, but when I got there they’d already sold out completely. This year, thankfully, Frieda’s contacted me a few weeks ago, giving me the schedule of roasting events (I hope to stop by the one near me this coming Saturday and I’ll be going EARLY), and they offered to SEND me some. Yippee!

What’s unique about Hatch chiles? They’re only grown in and around Hatch, New Mexico. Hatch chiles are considered the cream of the crop, the tastiest of the lot and unique. Some people might say a chile is a chile, but you know they can vary in heat (scoville units), so obviously they can vary in texture and flavor too. My own experience with Hatch was only from hearing about them at cooking classes and on a culinary tour I did years and years ago in Santa Fe, and from that I purchased dried chile powder made from Hatch chiles. It’s a bit hard to find.

Enter Frieda’s – a Southern California based distributor of specialty produce. They obviously believed in Hatch chiles too, and began distributing them all over the U.S.

Glance at the left here, you can see one of their web pages with the U.S. map of their roasting events. It’s an interactive map, the one on their web site, so do go to that page and click on locations. Kind of fun.

There are some recipes too – a salad dressing, a dip, chile verde (that’s what I’ve used them for), in deviled eggs and several other ideas.

Hatch chiles aren’t hot-hot, though after working with them the other day my hands did mildly sting for several hours.

There is a recipe on their site for how to roast them – I roasted and broiled the ones they sent me (roasted first for about 10 minutes, then broiled for about 5 minutes) to get those lovely char marks all over, covered them for awhile, then peeled off the skins.

I’ll probably pack these up in about 2-3 smaller portions and freeze them. In the fall, when my mind turns to chile verde or a bowl of beef chili, I’ll pull them out and use them. Thank you, Freida’s for sending me some!

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Have blender? An orange?  A lemon? With regular pantry items you can make this succulent salad dressing. Add some kind of fruit to a green salad and you’re all set. Particularly nice are fresh chunks of mango and pomegranate seeds.

Before I tell you about the dressing, won’t you just look at that cute little pitcher in the photo? It belonged to Dave’s mother. It’s the finest of crystal – ultra thin glass, and notice that the top handle doesn’t connect. It must be held very carefully or small fingers will slip right through the gap. But it’s so pretty and I love to use it. (Usually for cream when we serve coffee to guests – although it doesn’t hold much.)

This recipe came from Vita-mix, the manufacturer of my new powerful blender. I made it right after I got the blender, and then when we attended a cooking class for the Vita-mix, the demonstrators did this dressing as well. I’ve made it twice now, and have some in the refrigerator as I write this. It needs to be used in tonight’s dinner for sure since it’s been 3 days . . . this dressing will keep for 4 only.

The only tedious thing about making it is peeling and seeding the orange and lemon, the seeding particularly. Our home grown lemons have ample seeds of various sizes! But it’s worth it. Your blender needs to have some power in it otherwise it won’t grind up all the citrus membranes. But they’re good for you, and they give the dressing some viciousness. Just be careful when you make it – the oil has to be drizzled in through the removable cap in the lid – and it splatters – so just be aware!

What’s GOOD: the citrus taste – the dressing has just a hint of bitter, but also sweet from the honey. Goes best with a fruit-enhanced salad, I think. It’s best without a lot of vegetables added – mostly greens.
What’s NOT: nothing except that it doesn’t keep for more than 4 days.

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Whew, that’s a long-winded title for a recipe. You could eat this as an appetizer, cut up into wedges, or a whole one as a stand-alone lunch or vegetarian dinner. Or you could do what I did when I made it for a group: pile the hummus on a serving platter, then pile everything (except the arugula) on top of it. I used Feta cheese as the decoration, and I served sangak bread on the side with a knife so people could spread some of the mixture on individual pieces – this was an appetizer (see other picture below). As an appetizer I didn’t think the arugula would be easy to eat, so I left it off.

With the left overs a day later I served it with pita chips (Trader Joe’s). What you see in the photo at top is the flatbread on the bottom (from Trader Joe’s), and there’s a schmear of white bean hummus underneath there – sorry you can’t see it – then some sun dried tomatoes, caramelized onions (hmm, can’t see those, either), some Kalamata olives, then the arugula and shavings of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.

The most time-consuming thing to do is caramelize the onions. While you’re at it, make more than you need because you’ll use them in something else within a few days. Or you could eat them plain right out of the pan. Love caramelized onions!

My DH just walked past me as I’m sitting here at my computer in the kitchen, looked at the photo and said OH, that was so good. Make that again, will you? The recipe came from a Phillis Carey cooking class, and the 40+ people all oohed and aahed over it. I got the same when I made it as a plated appetizer. Great recipe.
What’s GOOD: everything about it – my favorite flavors in this are the caramelized onions and the sun-dried tomatoes – probably because the mixture of the savory (hummus) and sweet (onions and sun-dried tomatoes) offer such a taste contrast.
What’s NOT: nothing. Loved it a lot.

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This doesn’t look like much – can you even see that they’re sliced broccoli stems? I always quiz guests about what it is – I think one person, in all the years I’ve been making these, has figured out it was broccoli, and only because she carefully examined the outside edges.

This appetizer – really easy and very healthy and low calorie too – has been in my repertoire for decades. It’s not the right kind of appetizer for every dinner party, but it’s refreshing and so very, VERY different. First you have to peel the stems – not hard to do, took me about 2 minutes max. Then I sliced them up – not super-thin, between a 2 and 3/16 of an inch. Eyeball it. The stems soak in a vinegar, sugar and salt based marinade overnight (very easy to do) and they become more pliant and flexible, but still crunchy. Just not fibrous at all. After they’re marinated, you drain them and drizzle on a little tiny bit of toasted sesame oil and I decorated the bowl with chopped parsley. I think it would be good with chopped mint. That’s it. See? I told you this one was easy. If you want to make these more uniformly round, just use the peeler more vigorously and remove a bit more of the “bark” of the broccoli stem.

When you serve these, be sure to make it a game – who can guess what this is? When I made these this time people thought rutabaga, turnip, jicama, celery root. Nope, nope, nope, nope! I had to tell them! The recipe came from San Francisco A La Carte. It’s an old cookbook from the Junior League (originally printed in 1979, reprinted in 1991). You can buy $5 copies of the hardbound book. The reprinted paperback is available for a penny plus shipping through the link above, in case you’re interested.

What’s GOOD: how easy it is to make, how low calorie they are, and how tasty the little coins are on a summer evening.
What’s NOT: these may not appeal to everyone – even some people will stop eating it when they find out what it is. But those who like it will rave about it.

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A month or so ago I know I mentioned that I’d acquired a Vitamix blender. A workhorse of a machine that could mix cement, I think, if the quantities would fit in the container. (I’m joking, you’d never want to do that to a blender.)  A couple of weeks later, with me having not used the blender for anything except salad dressings, I saw a class listed at our favorite cooking school in San Diego (Great News, in Pacific Beach) on the Vitamix. I suggested my DH and I both go – he hardly does any cooking, but he was game. It was very inexpensive – although it didn’t include a meal – just a few samples of what the blender would do and we learned a bunch of techniques too. We had a strawberry agua fresca, a peanut and almond butter (wonderful), an orange vanilla vinaigrette (fabulous), kale and basil pesto (also fabulous) and a hot soup.

The very first thing the instructors did was a green smoothie. I was intrigued about that, because I’ve heard people say they’re really good and good for you. I watched The Chew one day a year or so ago when Daphne Oz  prepared green smoothies for all the other show cast. A few would just barely take a sip or two. Others loved it. Hers contains spinach, celery, kale, cucumbers, mint, parsley, apples, fresh ginger and lime juice.

In our class there was a recipe included in the handout for a “Spring Green Smoothie,” but this one we had in the class (below) was so good, I’ve barely ventured any further.  I’ve made this 3 times, so not every day – I have to have kale on hand, or baby spinach and I don’t always. Kale keeps for at least 10 days or so – spinach only a few days, so kale is my green of choice when I make this.

Please don’t make a frownie face about this – you should try it before you decide you really don’t like it. Our friends, Judy & Jerry say they liked it (at right)! Jerry even asked for the recipe, so does that tell you how much? These are our friends from Newtown Square, a village outside of Philadelphia. My DH, Dave, and Jerry have been friends since high school, bonding early-on at sailing. These friends have a home in Florida also and they SAIL their boat from Annapolis to Naples, FL (it takes a month of sailing each way) in the fall and return in the late spring.

The fruit balances out the greens – it really does. The couple-instructors were vegetarians mostly, but they said they start every morning with one of these drinks. There’s all kinds of good nutrients contained in kale and other dark leafy greens that are so very good for us, and particularly if you have them as your first meal, or part of your first meal.

Providing you have a blender that will chop ice (a requirement here), this smoothie is very simple to make. You want to include some very fruit-forward fruit – meaning fruit that has lots of flavor like mango, pineapple or apple. You can use grapes, blueberries, strawberries, peeled oranges, or other stone fruit, but stonefruit, doesn’t have as much flavor as you might hope. It’s good, but not exceptional. I’d use an apple before I’d use peaches, nectarines or apricots.

About the only trick to making these things is to put the heaviest items in first (i.e. the kale goes in last). So ice, fruit, water, greens and sweetener, if using. Start the motor on low, then increase as it continues to blend. Stop and push any greens down into the liquid. Add more water if needed, more fruit, more sweetener . . . whatever suits your taste buds. The greens are the star of the drink, but you actually don’t TASTE the greens.

The next day after making the first version you see below, I made another one (the 2nd recipe below). A bit of a sweeter one, and everyone liked it better. Me too. I added just a little bit of apple juice, an apple and a small knob of fresh ginger. No other fruit, just the kale, parsley. Oh gosh was it GOOD! And we all really liked the little hint of heat from the ginger. Next time I’m going to add fresh mint leaves – just a few.

What’s GOOD: Well, what can I tell you – not only do these taste good, but they’re good for you. I like these a lot – the 2nd one maybe a bit better, but probably because I’m a novice at green smoothies and I prefer a bit more sweeter flavor.
What’s NOT: nothing – it takes a few minutes to make, that’s all. And really not all that many.

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Without question, I’m begging you to make this. While rhubarb is still in season (barely) get yourself some, and gather some nice juicy strawberries and prepare this relatively simple cobbler that will make you and your guests swoon.

This recipe all started when our daughter Sara called to say she had some rhubarb one of her customers had given her, and since we were having a family get-together at her house in San Diego with dear friends who were visiting us from Philadelphia, she wanted to use it. Some of the group went sailing on our boat (which lives in San Diego) in the afternoon, then we high-tailed it to her house in time for dinner.

She’d never cooked rhubarb before. We live about 70 miles apart so we collaborated on who would do what – she did most of the dinner – I brought sangak bread and made this dessert. I found some rhubarb in one of our stores so brought additional – she said she didn’t have a lot. And, before we left home I mixed up the dry ingredients for the biscuits you see above. Once there I asked Sara for her rhubarb and she promptly pulled out 3 bunches of baby red chard. I laughed and told her no, that’s not rhubarb! She laughed. She had never even HAD chard before, she thought. It was very limp looking (she hadn’t wrapped it in a plastic bag) so I don’t even know that it will be edible.

Anyway, good thing I’d brought about 8 stalks of rhubarb. I cut up all the fruit, added the sugar, tapioca and orange zest and let it sit for about 20 minutes (lower picture above). I spread it out to all the corners (I made a 1 1/2 sized recipe, so I used a 9×13 Pyrex dish, which was perfectly sized. Then I mixed up the dry ingredients, added the butter and cut that in, then added the milk and egg, mixed, plopped the biscuits all over the top (upper photo above). Baked for 35 minutes. Done! We let it rest about 45 minutes or so before we enjoyed it (immensely) with vanilla ice cream on the side.

The recipe came from Simply Recipes, Elise Bauer’s blog. She explained that this recipe was revised and revised until she got it, finally, just right. I agree. It’s marvelous.

What’s GOOD: oh my goodness, was this ever fantastic! Next time I’m at the grocery store I’m looking for any remaining rhubarb. Strawberries are still in, so I know I’ll find those. The biscuit/cobbler is tender and tasty. Loved it with vanilla ice cream. Altogether wonderful.
What’s NOT: absolutely nothing whatsoever. Worth making.

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