When I read the write-up about this cake on Baking Banter (the blog from King Arthur Flour’s test kitchen) they talked about how very tender this cake is – like from a boxed mix, but it’s NOT – I knew I’d be trying it soon. And yes-yes-yes it’s every bit as good as it should be!

Over the years I’ve been baking I’ve often wondered why I couldn’t make a yellow cake (or any kind of cake, for that matter) as tender as a box mix. I mean, gee whiz, it can’t be those yucky additives in a boxed mix that make it tender? Right? I’ve tried. Many times I’ve tried. So when the gals at Baking Banter (the blog written by the staff in King Arthur Flour’s test kitchen) talked about it on their blog, about how they devised a cake that IS just as tender as a boxed mix, and certainly more tasty than a boxed mix, well, my cooking antennae went up. Then I forgot about it, so when we had a big family celebration (5 birthdays within 2 weeks) recently I decided to make this cake. We were going to have 10 people. This cake makes 10 slices. Great. That way I wouldn’t eat the leftovers.

So what makes this cake tender? Well, it’s likely a combination of things: yogurt in the cake, and probably the method of combining and mixing the batter (I think they mentioned that in the write-up). The cake has ordinary ingredients (other than yogurt in the cake which is a bit different). It’s easy to make, really.

The cake bakes in a one of those taller-sided 9-inch cake pans. Not an ordinary cake pan or you’ll have cake batter spilling over the edges. Someone mentioned you could use a springform pan for this but you might wrap the outside with foil. The batter is relatively thick, though, so I don’t think that would be necessary. It bakes for 30-35 minutes – DO make sure the very center is cooked through – I thought mine was at 30 minutes – the cake tester came out clean – but didn’t find out it wasn’t until it cooled, when the center sunk a little bit, that it wasn’t quite done. It didn’t matter. . . there was enough frosting that it filled in the hole. Nobody knew! But, in the photo above you can see the pointed end sinks just a little bit – that’s why. It did need the full 35 minutes.

Then you make the frosting. Gosh, this frosting is SO easy and SO good. I’ll be making that again on other cakes – not that I make them all that often – but I really, really liked this one, so perhaps I will. Everybody at the table raved about the cake and the icing. You melt and briefly boil butter, yogurt and cocoa together, then add it to powdered sugar and a little tiny bit of espresso powder (optional). It makes a perfect pouring type frosting. Obviously soft and pourable enough that it puddled around the cake. Once poured, don’t smear or try to spread or you’ll end up with a mess. Part of its beauty is the sleek top, untouched until it firmed up. The experts at King Arthur also have a chocolate version (although it’s actually a totally different batter). If you love Boston Cream Pie, they recommend using this cake, slicing in half horizontally and filling it with a custard or cream filling. Everything else would be the same. Maybe next time I’ll try that.

What I liked: everything, absolutely every little thing about it. The gals at Baking Banter did it again with a real winner. This will go onto my favorites list if that tells you anything.

What I didn’t like: nothing at all. Fabulous cake in every dimension.

printer-friendly PDF

MasterCook 5+ import file – right click to save file, run MC, then File|Import

Tweet

A few months ago I read something online about the book Yes, Chef: A Memoir. It’s written by Marcus Samuelsson, a man with an unusual background, but with a passion for food in general and specifically combining herbs and spices from cross-cultures. His route to chef success took many interesting twists and turns, although he might not say so. He says all he was doing was “chasing flavors.” It wasn’t until I got to the afterword that I learned the book was actually written (obviously from lengthy interviews) by Veronica Chambers. She’s a brilliant writer, no question. All through the reading of it I was amazed at Samuelsson’s command of the English language, only to find out it wasn’t really his voice at all. That isn’t said as a criticism at all – his story is so fascinating and she just tells it so vividly.

Well, here’s more about the story. But I don’t want to give away everything about it – if you enjoy reading chef memoirs you’ll want to read this one. Marcus was born in Ethiopia. Somewhere around age 2 he, his 4-year old sister and his mother all contracted TB. His mother knew their only hope was to walk 75 miles to Addis Ababa for treatment. They did get there – the children survived; their mother did not. It took a year or more of recovering his health before the orphanage found homes for the two – in, of all places, Sweden.  Nothing was known about the children’s father. There were thousands of people with TB; thousands died. Marcus and his sister were the lucky ones.

The next chapter of his life, then, began in Goteborg where he grew up in a very loving Swedish family, eating Swedish delicacies, mostly from his Swedish grandmother’s kitchen. His mother (his Swedish mother) didn’t cook much. Marcus credits a great deal of his interest and later passion about food to his Swedish grandmother, Helga. He was a typical boy, and passionate about soccer; he even thought maybe he could make a career of the game. He didn’t experience any real discrimination (from the color of his skin) until he was nearly an adult. He was trained in a Swedish culinary school, and was fortunate to then work in Switzerland, in France, on a cruise ship for a few stints (grueling), and finally in New York.

He describes his arrival in New York as feeling at “home.” People everywhere had his skin color. People didn’t stare at him at all. He fit in for the first time in his life. To say that Marcus Samuelsson is driven is almost an understatement. The man hardly knows how to rest, I think. Or maybe that’s just the impression I got – being a chef is a 24/7 hour job. He made his name famous once he became head chef at Aquavit, the classic Swedish restaurant in NYC. He was given a chance and prevailed at every rung of the ladder. The restaurant got plenty of press and stars after he took over the kitchen there. Eventually, as with many chefs, he struck out on his own and currently runs his own restaurant in Harlem, call the Red Rooster, on Lennox Avenue.  I don’t know if I’m ever going to visit New York City again, but I’ll tell you, I’m goin’ there if I do. They serve soul food, comfort food.

I was enchanted with this story, right up until the very last sentence. I didn’t want it to end. There isn’t a single recipe in the book; it’s all life story and a fascinating one at that. Marcus eventually finds his father in Ethiopia, and countless relatives he never knew he had. His Swedish mother accompanied him on his first trip to Addis Ababa. His cooking reflects the herbs and spices from the traveling he’s done in his life (all working as a kitchen underling) and he includes them into his cooking style. I was intrigued to read about berbere, every Ethiopian woman’s favorite hot pepper seasoning comprised of about 15 spices. When he first tasted it he felt it was part of his DNA – he knew it. He’s married (toward the end of the book he tells of meeting an Ethiopian model and he was smitten the moment he saw her; they’re pictured at left). And he’s living his dream of running a restaurant kitchen totally his way! Read the book, okay?

Tweet

You know it’s summer when cherries come into season. And right now, at Costco, they have the light fleshed Rainier (like Queen Anne) cherries in nice clear, clamshell boxes. Red, ripe, juicy and delicious.

It was a couple of years ago that I was reading one of my favorite food essay books, How to Pick a Peach by Russ Parsons (Los Angeles Times), that I decided to try one of his recipes (I’ve tried many) for a Bing Cherry Compote. I’ve made it numerous times since then, usually 2-3 times each summer, while cherries are in season. And I hope that I’ll have left at least one small 2-cup freezer container of them during the winter when cherries are nothing but a ghost in my mind. I love the stuff over vanilla ice cream.

I’d heard that the Costco Rainier cherries were really tasty so I had my DH buy me 2 of the boxes (each box was probably about 4 cups). Did you know that: Rainiers are sweet cherries with a thin skin and thick creamy-yellow flesh? And that these cherries are very sensitive to temperature, wind, and rain. They’re a cross between a Bing and a Vans cherry, and about 1/3 of a Rainier cherry orchard’s crop is eaten by birds. No wonder they’re so precious. According to wikipedia, some Rainier cherries sell for $1.00 apiece (yes, a piece) in Japan. They’re so treasured! Wow.

Gee whiz, that photo is so pretty – sorry to make you look at two of them in one post, but I just decided it was too pretty to not!

The cherries sat in the refrigerator for a few days, and then I knew I needed to do something with them. But what? Well, first I pitted them with my olive pitter. That did take about half an hour. I decided to wing it – I used the flavorings from the Bing cherry compote that I love so much, and adapted it to the lighter colored and light flesh cherries. What I didn’t want was a dark-red syrup; it needed to be clear or nearly clear. So, I used a sweet white wine (an after dinner wine, actually) instead of red wine, and white balsamic vinegar instead of regular dark balsamic, and the same spices: cinnamon bark, allspice berries and whole cloves. I also added in a big pinch of lemon zest. And some sugar. That was it. I used the same method from before. It’s very easy to make – once you pit the cherries. And some folks don’t mind the pits – if you really want to make it easy just rinse them and cook them with the pits.

Once they simmer (covered) for 10 minutes or so, the cherries begin to break down. You don’t want them to turn to mush – you want each cherry to still have its integrity – but you want to cook that wine flavor into them just enough. You also want the cherry flavor to leap through the syrup, which it does. The syrup is winey-briney (by brine I don’t mean salty) and it’s so good I could almost drink it as a liqueur! Altogether lovely.

What I liked: everything about it. I mean, it’s sweet cherries – I adore them, and they’re just so delicious over ice cream. The syrup is sublime.

What I didn’t like: nothing whatsoever. It’s a winner.
printer-friendly PDF

MasterCook 5+ import file – right click to save file, run MC, then File|Import

Tweet

The title is a little bit of a misnomer – it really should be something like Buttermilk Peach Sorbet, or Buttermilk Peach Ice or maybe Peach Sherbet. Not a name with “cream” in the title since there isn’t any cream in it. But we lump all kinds of these frozen confections under “ice cream”  whether they’re made with cream or milk or whatever.

If peaches are still in season around your home, do make an effort to go get some gorgeously ripe peaches, peel them and briefly cook them in a little water, then freeze packets of it. You can then make summery ice cream any month of the year. I just hate to take up valuable freezer space with frozen peaches. My freezer is something of a problem – it’s FULL. And I mean FULL. I could probably get a few frozen chicken breasts in there, and maybe a few very flat things. But that’s about it. I am trying, really I am – to defrost and eat things out of the freezer but then I find some new thing that has to go in there. If I had a full-on stand-alone freezer in the garage it would probably be full too. I need a 12-step program for me and my freezer problem. Want to start one?

Anyway, back to this dessert. The recipe came from Rick Rodgers. I’ve had it for several years, I think, but hadn’t gotten around to making it. But with peaches on the kitchen counter, well, this is what I did with them. I DO want you to read the nutritional info about this recipe – it’s really super low calorie and has a TRACE of fat in a serving. Is that great, or what?

If you’re expecting this to taste rich and creamy like Häagen–Dazs, it won’t be. It’s more like ice milk. I think you need to be “of a certain age” to remember ice milk. My mother used to buy it all the time (this would have been the 1950’s) when I was growing up, but I don’t think I’ve seen it in years. I read online that it went “out” in the 1960’s when low-fat milk was produced. My dad had a passion for ice cream in any way, shape or form. In his 80’s he had to start eating sugar-free, but he still loved it. We all kidded him because after eating a small bowl (my mother would never serve a big bowl of it) he’d systematically scrape his spoon up the sides, from the bottom center and up, all the way around, until he’d made a full circle. My dad was an engineer, so we’re not talkin’ a few scrapes, I mean maybe 20-30 per bowl. To get every single, solitary, last drop. If there’s a gene for ice cream, I’ve at least inherited some of his passion for the stuff. I try not to indulge, but I do. This recipe makes it a heck of a lot better for me/us.

Wanting to make this particular one more eating-friendly for my diabetic hubby, I made it with half Splenda. I DID use the 1/2 cup of brown sugar, though, in the mixture, because brown sugar has a unique caramel-like taste and I’d never thought about using brown sugar with peaches. It’s a match made in heaven, I’m telling you!

It’s a simple recipe to make – don’t forget to add the almond extract – that’s also a little bit different, and I loved the taste of it. It’s not overpowering but just adds another layer of flavor. The recipe indicates you can make this without an ice cream machine. I did use mine, and when it first came out it was soft in texture, but once frozen for a few hours it was almost rock hard. So my only suggestion about this recipe is: let it sit out for about 20+ minutes before trying to scoop it. That’s what I had to do to get the photo up top. If you’re willing to eat a more icy type “ice cream,” and want the low in fat and calorie type, this may be a new favorite for you. Given the choice of this and full fat, well, of course the full-fat has better flavor, but if you want to cut back, give this one a try.

What I liked: the brown sugar and almond extract add great layers of flavor in this. Just don’t expect it to be soft, scoop-able like ice cream – it’s more icy or sherbet-like. We loved it. Next time I am going to add 2 T. of Peach Pucker Schnapps to the mixture (any alcohol added to home made ice cream helps with the scooping ability), not only for the softness aspect of it, but also to add even more flavor (although it doesn’t really need it – it’s full of peachy flavor as it is).

What I didn’t like: having to let it defrost for 20+ minutes is a bit of a nuisance, that’s all. Otherwise, nothing.

printer-friendly PDF
MasterCook 5+ import file – right click to save file, run MC, then File|Import

Tweet

You’ll find very few crockpot recipes here on my blog. Not because I don’t like them – but just because I’m home all the time and usually prefer to make soups on the cooktop. I suppose this one wouldn’t have to be made in a crockpot – but gosh, it’s SO easy this way! If you’re employed full time or have a really busy schedule, this soup/stew will rock your world not only with ease but with flavor! If you love Mexican food, well, this is a shoe-in, then.

As I was cropping and adding text to my photos for this blog post, my fingers were almost itchy to get to writing about it because this soup is so fantastic! Oh my yes. Before I start writing I always work with the photos first, then I prepare the MasterCook recipe that gets exported to a pdf and as a text file (that goes into the box below). Once that’s all done (usually takes me 10-15 minutes or less) then I start writing. My mouth is watering looking at the photo above.

Back when crockpots first came out (wow, that was 1971), the recipes generally under-whelmed me. They lacked sufficient layers of flavor, I suppose. Yes they were easy. Yes, they helped with meal-making when I was a full-time working mom, and yes, the cleanup was easy too. But my first crockpot was ceramic, and back then you either had to brown meat in another pan (taking more time, and giving you another dirty pot) or you had to use raw meat, which is generally what I did. Now I know better – so much of the flavor in meat comes from that caramelization when it’s browned in a pan. So when I bought the Cuisinart Multi-Cooker, 7-Quart, all that changed because it has a heavy insert (coated in a nonstick surface) that can go right on the stove (to brown the meat first) and then you lift up the whole thing and put it into the crockpot. I don’t use it all that often, but I love it when I do. And I now have several crockpot cookbooks that are truly new-age – at least current age, with more steps to preparing it, but things come out tasting a whole lot better.

So back to this recipe. My friend Linda T was telling me about a crockpot enchilada soup she makes, that she got from her daughter Kristin. On the printed page Linda mailed me it said the recipe came Krissy, over at Dainty Chef, a blog. I followed Dainty Chef’s recipe nearly all the way through, only veering off with my combo of garnishes (I love cilantro). It’s one heck of a great recipe. In a nutshell, you first make a thin milk sauce mixture (I used 2%)  that gets mixed with some canned enchilada sauce. Now, I have to tell you, here’s where I veered off – it just happens that when we had family visiting recently, they went to one of their old family favorite restaurants, called Los Jarritos (on N. Garey in Pomona, no website, but you can read about it on Yelp). Our son-in-law, Todd, just loves this place too. This particular trip he had his mother Ann in tow (who just happens to be a great Mexican cook) and she usually buys a quart of their enchilada sauce whenever she’s there and takes it home. She did buy it and came to stay with us her last night, and put it in my freezer. You can guess what happened? She forgot it. So, my plan was to leave it there and the next time one of the family visits they could take it home (500 miles away). But then I got to this recipe . . . and I don’t have any canned enchilada sauce . . . and the lightbulb went off in my head . . . oh, I can use Los Jarritos’ sauce that’s in the freezer!

So there’s this saucy stuff (the thin milky sauce mixed with the enchilada sauce). First, though, you put into the crockpot a can of drained and rinsed black beans, some corn, Rotel tomatoes, some onion and bell pepper. Here I need to tell you something else – Rotel tomatoes are spicy hot. If you find them too hot, I’d suggest you use regular canned (diced) tomatoes and the juice, and add in canned green chiles and a bit of jalapeno for heat. For most adult tastes I think one can of Rotel would be fine. The restaurant enchilada sauce I used happened to have a lot of heat in it, so we had some really smokin’ hot soup.

Then you put the raw chicken breasts on top, cover with the enchilada sauce mixture and crockpot it on low for 6-8 hours (or on high for 3-4). About half an hour before it’s done, remove the chicken breasts and let them cool just a bit so you can handle it. Then shred it up into small bite-sized pieces and put it back into the crockpot and stir it all up to allow the chicken to re-heat. Meanwhile, prepare the garnishes. Scoop a heaping cup (or 2 for hearty eaters) of the soup mixture into a bowl and top with the garnishes of your choice.

What I liked: well, the flavor is paramount. It was fantastic. I loved all the layers of flavors – from the complex enchilada sauce to the textures in the beans, corn, tortilla chips and then the cool, refreshing cilantro and green onions. Altogether fantastic. It was easy enough – you do have to make the sauce, which does take 10 minutes or so. Open a few cans, but really that’s it until you’re ready to serve and need to fix the garnishes. Overall, very easy. I’ll make this for a big family dinner for sure. Maybe soon. A green salad on the side would be all that’s needed.

What I didn’t like: absolutely nothing at all! Will make this again. And again. It’s probably going onto my Carolyn’s Favs list.

printer-friendly PDF
MasterCook 5+ import file – right click to save file, run MC, then File|Import

Tweet

What’s there not to like about a sweet onion, bacon and butter? Nothing that I can think of other than the fat in the bacon and butter. A lot of the fat melted off into the bottom, so what you’re left with after baking an hour is a succulent onion with some delicious snippets of bacon to eat alongside it.

Again this year our friends Joan and Tom shared some of their Noonday onions from East Texas. Tom’s parents send a shipment to all of their kids each summer. This year’s crop was smaller-sized than in some years – about 2 1/2 to 3 inches in diameter I’d guess, but it made for a really nice onion portion.

Just recently I started watching Trisha Yearwood on the Food Network. I just read on Trisha’s website that her cooking series has been “picked up” for a season, so there will be more than the initial 6 episodes already aired. Besides being a terrific singer (although I’m not into country music at all), she is a really good cook. She’s married to Garth Brooks and they live in Oklahoma. I’ve printed out half a dozen of her recipes so far. This is the first one I’ve actually prepared, though. She had her Uncle  Wilson visit the show one episode and he made one of the family favs, these onions that make an appearance at every family gathering. And they’re easy to make. Truly they are. The recipe is from Trisha’s 2008 cookbook, Georgia Cooking in an Oklahoma Kitchen: Recipes from My Family to Yours.

The most tedious part was peeling the onions. Since this recipe calls for sweet onions, I didn’t want to lose any more of them than absolutely necessary, so I didn’t peel off another layer like I would normally just to get it done in a hurry. Then you hollow out a cone-shaped core, about 1-inch down – easy to do with a short, pointed paring knife. The onions get wrapped in a couple of slices of bacon, secured with toothpicks, then a pat of butter is put into the little hole. They’re wrapped in foil, leaving an opening for the steam to escape, then they’re grilled for an hour. Or baked at 350° for an hour. Be sure to remove the toothpicks, then either serve them whole, or cut them in quarters (if they’re large) and serve with the bacon. I think if they’re really large, they’d need to oven bake for more than an hour – at least 15 minutes longer. But test them with the tip of a sharp knife to make sure they’re done. Sweet onions contain more water than traditional onions, so they should cook in less time.

In the recipe Trisha suggests cutting the onions in quarters to serve them – depending on how big they are, cutting in half might be fine, or in my case I served a whole onion per person. There were lots of juices in the bottom of the foil packet – some of it water from the onion itself, some bacon fat, and probably some of the butter, although I’d hoped it would stay housed in the onion layers. No matter, as the onions were delicious. Juicy, moist, and so very good with a little bite of bacon with each mouthful. I forgot to salt and pepper them, but it made no difference whatsoever. We didn’t miss the sodium or the pepper. Next time I might add some dried thyme into the hole, since that’s my favorite go-to herb. They also re-heat well in the microwave (take off the foil, obviously).

What I liked: how easy they were to make. The juiciness of the onion, and the smoky taste the bacon added. Altogether good. Yes, I’d make it again.

What I didn’t like: nothing. I’ll be sad when I can’t find sweet onions to make this with, though!

printer-friendly PDF
MasterCook 5+ import file – right click to save file, run MC, then File|Import

Tweet

Ever heard of wattleseed, or wattle seed (one or two words, you’ll see it both ways)? It’s the seed from a specific type of Australian acacia shrub. It’s not a variety grown anywhere but Australia, otherwise I’m certain we’d have  wattle seed on our spice shelves.

My daughter-in-law brought me a very small package of  several Australian herbs and spices some years ago after a trip, and I’d planned on using all of them, but we had a bug infestation in my pantry, and they loved the wattleseed and everything else in the other packages too.

So it wasn’t until we visited Australia a couple of years ago and I sought out some wattleseed (not on every grocery store shelf, I discovered) that I now have some to try. I’d intended to make something with it right away, but I stored it in a jar and promptly forgot about it. The picture at left was taken near Hobart, Tasmania, and shows my DH’s hand holding the acacia flowers out in the sunlight. The seed pods from this shrub were and still are harvested by the Aboriginal people in Australia. They use it in a variety of cooking methods – in a drink – in stews. Eventually non-Aboriginal people discovered the interesting flavor profile it has, and began using it in other (mostly dessert) dishes.

When we were in Australia we ate some wattleseed gelato. Oh my goodness, was it ever good. Tasting it, it conjures up hazelnut and vanilla  on my taste buds. It has tiny dark and light flecks in it which look something like the tiny seeds in a vanilla bean. It’s the kind of mottled color of ground coriander (see picture at right), but bears no flavor resemblance. Some people taste chocolate and coffee in it too. I’ve not found any source for ground wattleseed here in the U.S. (although I read somewhere that any U.S. grown wattleseed is poor quality and not worth buying – I haven’t found it in any case). Here’s a link if you’re wanting to buy this from Vic Chericoff, the man who really put wattleseed on the world culinary map in the 1980’s. Maybe one of our friends will visit Australia sometime soon and I’ll be able to ask them to buy it for me – although as I mentioned, we had trouble finding it. My DH was so patient with me – we walked all over a farmer’s market in Melbourne trying to locate some – finally did at a butcher shop, of all places. They said they used it for a particular kind of seasoned roast.

Anyway, after all that info about wattleseed, let’s get to the recipe, okay? The only recipe I had was wattleseed ice cream which I researched a couple of years ago after we returned from Australia. Going online I also found a recipe for a cake, which I made, and will post here in a few days – it was kind of like a pound cake using wattleseed and citrus. There aren’t lots of recipes for the spice, surprisingly. There is a short list here, and here. You may not remember a post I did from our trip to Australia about the ANZAC biscuits – I wrote up a recipe provided by our Aussie guide’s sister who brought a plate full of them to our tour bus when we stopped near where she lives in New Zealand (they’re cookies developed during WWII to ship to soldiers at the front because they’re sturdy and because they couldn’t get eggs and butter during the wartime shortages, yet they’re still very popular today). Anyway, I did find several wattleseed ANZAC biscuit recipes.

Some years ago Emeril made wattleseed ice cream on one of his Food Network shows, and it’s his basic recipe I used, although I did make a couple of changes. Vic Chericoff mentions Emeril’s recipe on his website and makes suggestions like not adding vanilla, as he feels it’s redundant since wattleseed has vanilla undertones all by itself. He also doesn’t think you should strain the custard mixture of all the wattleseed segments because they add a lot of color and interest to the ice cream. I used a really fine-mesh strainer and most of the seeds still went through it, which was fine. Usually you strain the ice cream base because you want to remove any possible egg “stuff.”

When you use wattleseed, you want to extract as much flavor as possible, hence adding the ground wattleseed to the cream you scald helps accomplish that. Other than wattleseed, the base mixture is very similar to every other egg-based ice cream base you’ve made. In my case I poured the base into a plastic bowl, nestled it into a bigger bowl filled completely with ice, then I added another bowl on top filled with ice – all this to chill it faster. And chill it below 38°. Chilling the base as fast as possible doesn’t allow for as many ice crystals to form (makes for smoother ice cream).

So, after making the ice cream base – and chilling it quickly, I made it in the ice cream machine. Since it was so cold, it only took about 40 minutes. I scooped it out into a quart-sized plastic container and froze it. When I served it about 3 hours later it was still slightly soft and smooth in the middle – made for easier scooping.

Serving it to our friends Cherrie and Bud, who have never been to Australia, and had never heard of wattleseed, they were blown away. I mean blown away by the taste. Dave and I relived our Australia visit too.

What I liked: well, there’s no question I like this stuff or I wouldn’t have run all over in markets throughout Australia trying to find wattleseed! Good. Tasty. Ah yes. I have just enough to make one more wattleseed something and it will be ice cream. Wattleseed has such a unique flavor spectrum. It’s worth seeking out somehow. Any of your friends going to Australia? Get them to buy you some! Buy me some too, okay?

What I didn’t like: well goodness – nothing at all. Loved it! As long as you can find wattleseed!

printer-friendly PDF
MasterCook 5+ import file – right click to save file, run MC, then File|Import

Tweet

One of the things I crave for dinner, especially in warm weather, is a big, honkin’ green salad with oodles of fresh veggies chopped up in it. I like fresh fennel, carrot, celery, sugar snap peas, tomatoes (in this case I had super heirloom cherry tomatoes), avocado, radishes, arugula, Belgian endive, some red leaf lettuce and usually some Romaine too. If I have left over baguette I might make some garlic croutons (in this case I didn’t). I’ll add some Feta cheese perhaps. Maybe hearts of palm or pickled beets; even a few kidney beans. If I had them languishing in the refrigerator I’d add hard boiled eggs, left over chicken, or maybe tuna.

Under most circumstances I have a jar of one of my home made salad dressings in the refrigerator. Today, no. I’d used them all up. But I did have some of the Little Girlie’s Green Sauce remaining, so I perused a Southwestern cookbook I got as a gift recently and sure enough, there was an avocado dressing in it. It contained all the ingredients in the Green Sauce and then some. So I adapted it and came up with a scrumptious avocado dressing that tasted just great on the big salad to which I added a lot of the ingredients I mentioned above. My DH gets weary of chewing a big salad. Not me. I enjoy all the crunch and know that it’s so good for me too. I go several days sometimes without making a salad as we have lots of veggies (2 sometimes) instead. But this time of year we have so much beautiful garden bounty at the farmer’s markets, and perfect for a salad.

This dressing tastes something like the avocado dressing they used to serve at one of our local Mexican restaurants. With pepitas sprinkled on top, it made a delicious meal. I never knew how they made it – I’d say I nailed it without even trying to do so. To my mind, the mayonnaise is what makes the difference – it’s not just an oil/vinegar or oil/lime juice vinaigrette, but has a creamy consistency. I used to think it had sour cream in it. I think not! It was mayo. The cookbook I consulted didn’t have mayo in it, so that’s one of my additions. Just don’t make a lot of the dressing as it probably won’t keep indefinitely – avocado tends to go “off” after a day or two. And cilantro isn’t a keeper in liquid either, although it managed really well in the Green Sauce, I noticed. It kept fine for about 6 days. If you have left over of this dressing, serve it like guacamole with chips.

What I liked: well, the avocado garlic flavor was rich and tasty in the salad. Use your own judgment about how much to use. My salad took about 3 T. per serving, I think – I didn’t measure. In any case, with the avocado as the main ingredient, it’s not bad for you anyway. So scoop more as needed until it tastes right.

What I didn’t like: nada.

printer-friendly PDF
MasterCook 5+ import file – right click to save file, run MC, then File|Import

Tweet

Think lemon zest. Think sugar cookie. Think almost like lemon curd in a cookie, but it doesn’t have any lemon curd in it. Just lemon juice and lemon zest. Oh, yes, yum. If you look very closely at the photo you can barely discern the lemon zest in the cookie itself.

My friend Peggy made these cookies at a book group meeting a couple of months ago. Normally I pass on by eating sugar cookies. Although good, if I’m going to have cookie calories, I want them to be in something much more flavorful than a sugar cookie, maybe even gingerbread, chocolate or chocolate chip. But some one of the other book group guests standing next to me put the cookie in her mouth and raved about the lemony flavor. I couldn’t exactly think how you could get lemon concentration in a cookie, but it works.

Peggy gave me the recipe, then I found it yesterday at Martha Stewart’s website. Maybe I even have it in my M.S. cookies cookbook. If you read the comments there, you might wonder, as some did, if there is something wrong with the recipe because the batter is very loose and soft. So it requires chilling before you can manipulate the dough. The batter is mixed at a medium speed for awhile, giving it an almost ribbony quality like a cake batter. But no, it’s cookie dough. So, no, I don’t believe there is a mistake in the original M.S. recipe. It makes a very, very  tender cookie. Tender = fragile. The recipe below makes just 30 cookies, supposedly. I think I got 26, so I should have made them slightly smaller to get 30 of them.

The batter has a tiny bit of reduced-down lemon juice in it, plus a bunch of grated lemon zest – that’s how you get the extra lemony flavor in a cookie. Do take the time to chill the batter before trying to roll the cookies in the lemon-zested sugar mixture and baking. I suggest overnight, but I think I was able to make the cookies after about 4 hours of chilling. You roll them in the lemon zest/sugar mixture, then flatten them with the bottom of a flat glass. Bake for 10-11 minutes. Cool on the pan for a bit – remember, they’re fragile – and remove carefully to a rack to cool completely. Then I packaged them into a ziploc baggie, 3 across, 3 down and 3 deep and froze them. They’re actually very tasty frozen, too.

Our daughter-in-law, Karen, dropped by the next day and was preparing a quick dessert to take to a party they were going to near where we live and she left the left overs of the lemon curd tarts she assembled. So, when she saw the cookies she suggested we use the lemon curd and blueberry jam sweetened ricotta cheese on some of the cookies with a fresh raspberry on top. There was dessert for a family gathering we had that night.

What I liked: the lemony-ness of the cookie. I just love lemon, so it was a no-brainer that I’d like this cookie. Yes, I’d make it again, maybe even to make the dessert I mentioned above. To me it tastes like there is lemon curd in the cookie. There isn’t, but if you like lemon curd, you’ll just love this cookie.

What I didn’t like: if I had to say something, I’d just say they’re almost too fragile. Not impossibly fragile, but they are tender. But that’s part of what makes them good. Don’t mash the cookies too thinly, that’s all.

printer-friendly PDF
MasterCook 5+ import file – right click to save file, run MC, then File|Import

Tweet

Most of you won’t know that just a few months after I started writing this blog back in 2007, as my husband and I were bringing our sailboat into the dock at our yacht club in San Diego after an afternoon putt around the harbor, I jumped off our boat onto the dock while the boat was going forward – my job was to quick-like wrap a line around one of the cleats on the dock to STOP the boat from plowing into the dock itself because you have to motor into the space under some power – I know, too much information –  (I’d done dozens of times before) – and as I jumped I was off-balanced somehow, my right foot went over sideways and just like that I fractured a bone in my foot, the one on the outside edge. Having never broken a bone before, let alone one in my foot, I tried to carry on, thinking it was just a sprain, which I HAD done before jumping off our boat at a different dock 10 years earlier and had to wear a boot for several weeks. This day, though, within 10 minutes I was in moderate agony. Later that day, my DH actually had to pull me, sitting in one of the rolling dock carts, up to our car because I couldn’t put any weight on the foot at all. If you don’t think that looked funny – my husband with 2 artificial legs pulling me sunk into a dock cart (they’re square-ish and quite deep). My foot swelled up like crazy, of course, despite icing it immediately. But no, it was a fracture and I was laid up for near-on 3 months. Most of which I spent in a wheelchair since I couldn’t put an ounce of weight on my foot. Needless to say, I don’t jump off our boat anymore – I sit on the rail and hop off carefully. Very carefully. That day, though, my DH was able to reverse the engine to stop the boat, without me cleating the line, thank goodness! He’s been a sailor for 60 years, so he surely knows how to handle a boat!

So what does this have to do with the spice rub, you’re wondering? Well, I carried on writing my blog, but didn’t have photos because my DH (who was without a doubt a very DEAR Hubby during that endless 3 months) cooked all the meals – even he would tell you we didn’t eat very well since he truly doesn’t know how to cook. So I shared recipes on my blog (without pictures) that were favorites of mine, and I had every intention, immediately upon recovering, of making every dish and photographing them so I could include photos in each and every post. I did do that with many, but not all. And this was one that’s lived all these years with a generic photo of fresh corn in the husks as its only visual.

Therefore, I’m rectifying that right now. We bought fresh corn at the corner farm stand – that wonderful white corn that I adore – and I whipped up the spice rub – and took a bunch of pictures.

So, back in 2007 I wrote up this recipe. But since it’s such a sensational one, I decided you should revisit it too, just like I did today. I made up a batch of the spices and it should last us through the summer – assuming I make this just 3-4 times. But besides that, ground spices once combined don’t hold their pungency for more than a few months. The only thing that makes this North African is the combo of spices. Probably Moroccan, I’d guess. Whether they grill corn on the cob in Morocco I don’t know – do they even have corn in Morocco?

There really aren’t all that many things in this mixture – I gathered them up on the kitchen counter and combined them in a bowl, then stirred them up. Into a firm-sealing jar they went and it’ll sit on my kitchen counter (so I don’t forget to use it). You can see  up above what’s in the mixture – ground cloves, ground cinnamon, ground cumin, ground coriander, ground ginger, oregano, salt and pepper. That’s it. The recipe came from Cooking Light, in 2000.

If you prepare this according to the original recipe you have to do a “process” with the corn husks (opening them without tearing off the husks, removing the silk, adding the oil and spices, then re-wrapping the husks to cover the corn). I’ve stopped doing that part ‘cuz it’s just too time-consuming and tedious. Now I just wrap one or two husked ears in foil and they go onto the grill to cook/steam, rather than actually grill. Besides, with the original, it was just the outside of the corn husks that got “grilled,” so I can’t imagine it makes any difference to the taste. So I’ve re-written the recipe using foil and using olive oil spray (no butter). If you want the original, click on the link 2 paragraphs up. I sprinkle on the spice rub – the oil spray gives the spices something to stick to, a good thing. You could rub the raw corn with butter, but I can’t say that you really need to – it’s SO tasty with the olive oil spray. The corn itself provides plenty of flavor. I used to nearly roll the corn in the spice rub, but now I just sprinkle it on – sometimes more heavily than others – I didn’t use a whole lot this time.

What I like: well, I’m just plum-crazy about the spices. I love-love lots of flavors exploding in my mouth, and to find one that has almost zero fat in it and straight-forward cooking (i.e. simple), I’m a happy camper. It’s not often I have one of those I’m willing to broadcast here on the blog.

What I didn’t like: well, absolutely nothing at all. This recipe is a favorite.

printer-friendly PDF
MasterCook 5+ import file – right click to save file, run MC, then File|Import

Tweet