So, this is how the story goes. My friend Cherrie and I were having lunch in Solana Beach with my friend Linda a few weeks ago, and since all three of us like to cook, often our conversations steer into food directions. And Cherrie was telling us a story . . .

Cherrie’s sister lives about 50 miles north of us, and over the years of visiting, Laurie’s family would often go out (or bring food in) from a restaurant nearby called the Smoke House. Everyone in the family loves the food. But mostly, they love-love the garlic cheese bread from this place. I suppose they’ve asked the restaurant how they make it, to no avail. So, a couple of years ago somebody gave Laurie a recipe and said “try this – it’s almost like the restaurant’s.”

Laurie made it for her family. Until she served it, everyone pooh-poohed it, saying no, this wasn’t going to be the recipe. Couldn’t be the recipe. That crispy cheesy stuff couldn’t start from a package of the dry “cheese sauce” from inside a box of Kraft Mac & Cheese. Nah. And then they ate it, and decided it was pretty-darned close to the recipe. And Laurie’s been making it ever since. And so has Cherrie.

With that kind of fun background story, I had to try it. We were up north visiting family and I figured our two grandchildren would enjoy this bread. So, on the mission, I bought a box of Kraft Mac & Cheese. Not the upbeat type with extra cheese. Just the plain old one. That’s about a dollar a box. You don’t need the macaroni – but you need the little packet of cheesy stuff that’s inside the box. Use the macaroni for something else.

So, first you marinate garlic in melted butter, and that must sit overnight, to develop all that great garlic flavor. Just before dinner, re-melt the butter and spread it on cut loaves of French bread. Then you mix the mystery dry cheese sauce mix and some of the old-fashioned green-can dried Parmesan cheese. That gets sprinkled all over the bread. Into a hot oven it goes for about 6-8 minutes to warm the bread all the way through, then you change the oven to broil for about 30-45 seconds (well, it depends on how close the bread is to the broiler element, so it might take longer) until the cheese gets crusty brown. Serve.

I do have a condition, though, and it’s about the BREAD. I’m NOT a fan of regular grocery-store type loaves of French bread. I think it’s like Weber bread, just made into French loaves. Has no taste and definitely no texture. So, do seek out a better loaf of French bread. I don’t recommend an artisanal baguette though – it’s too crusty, narrow and crispy. You want a wide, flattish type loaf. But an artisan one is fine. Linda tried this on something similar to a ciabatta (holey, wide and flat) but it was thicker. She discovered that the baking (heating) time was not sufficient, so I upped it some based on a similar loaf I used. If you make it with a very thin bread, then stick with less baking time.

So, this bread isn’t gourmet. And who knows what’s really in that dry cheese sauce mix – probably food additives, etc. And who eats the old green-can Parmesan anymore? Normally not me! But, is it good? A resounding yes.

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Two years ago: all about the Beater Blade for your stand mixer

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The first time I had posole – when I was visiting Santa Fe, New Mexico for the very first time, I was blown away with the intense flavors. I attended a cooking class in Santa Fe and learned some of the nuances, and about the important New Mexico chiles and/or powder that must be in it. Whenever I see posole on a menu I usually order it. But really, it’s not hard to make, and I think this recipe is as good, if not better, than any I’ve ever had at a restaurant. It freezes well, too, although the toppings must be made within an hour or so of serving.

I made this a couple of weeks ago when we were visiting our Northern California family, and the grandkids could pick and choose which toppings they wanted on their soup. Our 17-year old grandson doesn’t like vegetables, he says. Pushes them around his plate to avoid eating them, and he picked all around the veggies in this soup. Our granddaughter, though, is game for tasting almost anything (thank you, Taylor! – she reads my blog) and she liked this soup and ate it all.

The soup is pork based – this one uses country style ribs. They are slow cooked for a couple of hours, then the mixture (including the broth) gets refrigerated overnight. Now, you don’t have to do that step, but it makes for a healthier soup since you can remove the fat from the meat and the broth before proceeding. The dried New Mexico chiles are an essential ingredient – I hope you can buy them at your local market like I can. Anyway, the chiles are soaked in water for half an hour, then made into a thin puree in the blender (with some added onion, garlic, salt and water).

The actual soup preparation is easy. I actually add some vegetables to my posole. It’s likely not traditional, but this soup isn’t billed as an authentic posole anyway. You can add what types of veggies you like – I used carrots, more onion, and because I had one, I charred a pasilla chile and added that chopped up as well. The hominy, though, is a necessity. Mostly this stew is all about the hominy. You can find hominy in the canned vegetable aisle. You could substitute other beans, but it definitely wouldn’t be a New Mexican style posole that way. If you don’t like hominy, use canned pinto beans instead. Pictured here you can see the big bag of shredded, chilled pork, all ready to be poured into the soup.

The garnishes, though, are what make this dish. Truly they do. You simply must have some corn tortillas chips. You can use packaged chips – or visit your local Mexican restaurant and buy a small bag of their homemade chips if you don’t want to make your own. Do add the finely shredded Romaine lettuce, some diced avocado, radishes (very finely sliced or diced), some freshly chopped cilantro and if you really want to cap it off, serve with a couple of lime wedges on the side of each bowl.

This would make a very fun company meal – especially if you make oodles of toppings to put out. Cheese isn’t traditional, but maybe some of the Mexican crumbly white cheese (queso fresco) would be good too. The finished soup flavor is spicy, but not overwhelmingly hot. The dried chiles add a really delicious depth to the soup, and a gorgeous red/orange color. This soup is really flavorful!

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A year ago: Plum Compote (oooh, that was delicious – try it during plum season)
Three years ago: Iceberg Wedge with Blue Cheese

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You can’t really see these biscuits very well. Sorry. I cut large squares, rather than smaller round biscuits since these were going on a casserole – actually they went in the bottom of the casserole, and more on top. I’d picked up a used book – a cookbook, of course – called Biscuit Bliss: 101 Foolproof Recipes for Fresh and Fluffy Biscuits in Just Minutes. Every time we visit Placerville, where one of our daughters and her family live, I stop by a cute used book store in town. And invariably I come out of there with a new (but used) cookbook in hand. This time I bought three (a memoir about Julia Child, written by one of her associates for about 20 years, and Maya Angelou’s cookbook, which is almost more story than it is recipes, although each short chapter does contain one recipe relating, somehow, to the story she tells about her growing up. Or her family.

Finding several recipes in this biscuit book to try, I finally settled on this one. I liked the idea of light and fluffy, and my daughter did have some Crisco on hand. When I use shortening these days I buy the non-hydrogenated kind, but this was just one meal, so I used Crisco that was on the cupboard shelf. It’s a long drive to the local grocery store, besides, and not all stores carry that other type.

These took no time to mix up – there’s a dry mixture and a wet mixture. The dry mixture includes butter, which needs to be cut into the flour part (I used my fingers) since my daughter didn’t have a pastry blender. The dough is rolled out to a thin layer and you just cut. I used a square cutter because it was easier to use for a squarish-shaped casserole. At left you can see the bottom biscuits (with cutter), then I scooped in the casserole and added more biscuits on top.

The recipe suggests baking this at 475°. I didn’t bake it that high because it had a casserole underneath it, and if I had it to do over I’d have baked the casserole for about 20 minutes first, to get the mixture hot, THEN I’d have added the biscuits. But biscuits had to go on the bottom too, so I just winged it and baked the casserole at 400° for a longer period. The biscuits were supremely light and crispy-crunchy. Delicious texture. Everybody ate their fill, me included!

So, who’s Sam, you ask? The cookbook author, James Villas, says Sam is a Texas friend of his, who has a far and wide reputation for making the lightest and fluffiest biscuits around. Villas says it’s from the cake flour, the shortening and the egg in it. Whatever, or however, they were really very good.

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A year ago: Chicken with a Garlic Lemon Crust
Two years ago: Meat – about buying good quality
Three years ago: Vermont Cheddar Bread

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It’s not very often that I do a blog post about a book I’ve read. I’m an avid reader, mostly books I download onto my Kindle. I’m in two book groups. And this book is one I read for one of these groups. I do update my left sidebar regularly which contains a section all about what I’m reading, in case you rarely go look at my actual blog site, but read my posts through a blog reader.

I’d read about this book in a magazine sometime last year, and thought it sounded interesting, so I was glad when one of my groups decided to read it.

Have you ever heard of HeLa cells? You’re about to learn. From the moment I ticked my Kindle to the first page, I could hardly put it down. This is NOT a book of fiction. It’s a true story. About Henrietta Lacks, a very poor black woman who found out in 1950 that she had cervical cancer. She was treated at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, a hospital that was founded on the principles of providing health care to the needy and poor. She was treated in the “colored” section of the hospital. The treatment for such cancer at that time was limited. Radium rods were inserted in her cervix for a day or two, then removed, and it was hoped that the cancer would recede. In Henrietta’s case, it did not work, and she died some months later in 1951, her body consumed by malignant tumors. She was married with five children, one an infant. She was 28 years old.

But, during the treatment her doctor removed a dime-sized piece of tissue from her cervix – cancerous tissue – and gave it to a colleague to test it. At the time, no lab researchers had been able to grow cancer cells in a petri dish or test tube, and the research lab within Johns Hopkins was attempting to grow cancerous tissue. They needed it in order to test possible treatments – the goal of trying to find a cure for cancer. After dividing the tiny piece of tissue into many even tinier pieces, the lab assistant put it aside to grow. A couple of days later the tiny pieces of tissue (cells) had not only grown, but they’d grown hugely. Henrietta’s doctor and the research colleague were thrilled. It was a huge breakthrough in medical science. The doctor gave samples of her cells to other researchers (at no charge). There was not a thought about marketing it – these were research physicians who were on a mission to cure cancer. And in the years since, many drugs have been developed to treat some diseases (like HIV and leukemia). All thanks to Henrietta Lacks.

Henrietta was not consulted about the small piece of tissue removed from her cancerous cervix. If she’d been asked, she might have agreed. But at the time, doctors (particularly those running clinics for the poor) simply took samples as a routine – from most patients. And most patients weren’t consulted. At the time such tissue samples were identified with a unique code – the first two letters of the patient’s first and last name. Hence we have HeLa. And HeLa cells are now, to this day, continuing to grow and thrive and provide fodder to cancer testing around the world. What’s unique about Henrietta’s cells is that they grow at an astounding rate – far faster than any other tissue ever grown from another tissue sample. So cancer testing can be done in a shorter period of time, speeding up the process. Laboratories and pharmaceutical companies and individual researchers buy HeLa cells now, and pay enormous sums for it. None of the profits ever went to Henrietta’s family. I do want to clarify here: according to the author, Johns Hopkins never profited from the growing of HeLa cells. They gave it away. It was other companies, laboratories, hospitals that decided to become profiteers of her cells.

Rebecca Skloot, the author, took 10 years writing this book. She’s a young woman – if you’re interested, check out her website.  She began researching HeLa when she was a graduate student, but it took years for the Lacks family to trust her. Part of the story involves several road trips Rebecca took with Henrietta’s daughter Deborah trying to find some further family history, with the push-pull of Deborah’s untrusting temperament. So many people had strung them along, promising, promising. There’s no question the research community as a whole mistreated the Lacks family. But court cases (regarding who owns tissue samples) that have taken place in the ensuing years clearly state that once something is removed from our bodies (like a malignant tumor, or a cyst) it is no longer owned by the patient. This brings up a lot of questions for people who have an interest in medical ethics. The author devotes 40+ pages as an afterword about the subject.

The author established a foundation from the proceeds of this book, to benefit the heirs of Henrietta Lacks – hopefully it will be used to send some of her great-grandchildren to college.

Writing more here about this book would be easy, but maybe too tedious for you to read. You owe it to yourself to read it. If you have a smidgen of interest in the medical field, you simply must read this book. Again, it’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

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A couple of weeks ago I received a very nice email from a marketing person at Freida’s produce folks. They wanted to know if I’d like to receive some blood oranges since they’re in season right now. Sure, I said. A few days later a lovely package of Moro blood oranges arrived at my front door. We were away for about a week and then again went away for a weekend, so I decided the best thing to do was to juice the blood oranges. The gorgeous red juice resided in the freezer until yesterday when I decided to make something.

Recently I’d listened to a KCRW podcast in which an L.A. chef from Sauce on Hampton talked about a salad he likes to make with blood orange juice. The original recipe is online. I did make a couple of alterations (my avocados weren’t ripe, and I didn’t have Cara Cara oranges on hand – so I substituted regular oranges and added some freshly grated Parmesan cheese) and I totally forgot to add the slivered almonds!

The oranges are just so bright red – and the juice is so lovely! I made a salad with the oranges one day – they needed nothing on them – I merely peeled them and sliced them up. This salad that I made for dinner, though, required just a bit more work. It has baby spinach as the main green, along with some thinly shaved fresh fennel bulb and some thinly sliced celery. Ideally I’d have had some avocado to add too. And the almonds . . .

The dressing is simple – the blood orange juice, apple cider vinegar, some Dijon mustard, garlic, salt, pepper and some extra virgin olive oil. Whizzed up in the blender it made a nice pink-ish emulsion. Lovely for this salad. And delicious too.

Blood oranges may not be available everywhere – the Moro variety can be found at our local Southern California Ralph’s stores, though, in case you want to seek them out. Look for the Freida’s label.

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Two years ago: Cardamom Chocolate Chip Cookies

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Can you see the little morsels of Granny Smith apple nestled in the middle of this cake? And the toasted pecans? And the stick-your-spoon-in-it-and-lick-it-clean brandy sauce (drizzle) all around it? Oh my. This is another one of those – if you trust me – you need to make this cake. It’s SO moist. So delicious. It makes a very tender cake (well, it should, since it does have 1 1/2 cups of vegetable oil in it!). The title may be a tad misleading. You’d think it must have some kind of Cajun spices in it with a Cajun name to it. No, it really doesn’t. It’s the sauce that makes it Cajun, using brandy, or praline liqueur if you have that, or bourbon.

There’s nothing difficult about this cake – it makes a thick batter and your pour it into a 9×13 pan. Once baked, it’s cooled, then you pour part of the brandy sauce over it and serve a bit more on each plate. The sauce is very easy to make – you merely bring the ingredients to a boil, cool. Pour. You could make this in a bundt pan. You can halve the recipe and make one 9-inch round cake pan of it. You can double it to serve a whole lot more people. And it’s better the next day, actually.

The recipe came from Katherine Emmenegger, the executive chef at Great News, the cooking school in San Diego that my friend Cherrie and I visit with regularity. Katherine prepared a New Orleans style meal from beginning to end. I’m starting with the end since this was my favorite recipe of the bunch. Make this one, okay?

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Two years ago: Butterflied Leg of Lamb with Cherry Merlot Sauce

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Really, I didn’t think I’d ever want another scone recipe since I have a favorite one I’ve been making forever and ever. Mine, Buttermilk Scones, are a very rich biscuit type, laden with butter, cut into cute little rounds. But when I read this recipe over at one of my favorite blogs, Farmgirl Fare, where Susan explained all about these scones, the very recipe she used when she used to own a bakery here in California . . . well, I just couldn’t resist trying them. Especially because they’re made with Meyer lemon juice and zest. A lot of it, actually. Anything that utilizes a lot of lemon juice is good in my book right now since we have lemons coming out the yin-yang.

This scone version is more cake-like. And they’re tall and BIG. Susan does explain that you can make two rounds of dough and make smaller, thinner ones, but I was intrigued to make one big, fat one and cut them into wedges. Susan’s are less sweet than most scones, i.e. there’s not a lot of sugar in the dough. You do add turbinado sugar on top, and you might want to be generous with it. If you like eating a scone that’s less sweet, you’ll love this one. I loved the texture, actually. And loved the lemony taste, big time. She uses an egg wash on top – which would help the sugar stick to the scone. I didn’t do that part, but you sure can. If you’re serving these with a sweet jam or jelly, then the less sweet scone is just perfect. And what can I say, but these were delicious with my homemade lemon curd I made just last week.

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A year ago: Blueberry Sour Cream Tart
Two years ago: Pork Tenderloin with Onion, Orange Pan Sauce
Three years ago: Cilantro Chicken

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Wouldn’t you just like to sink your fork into that mound of creamy polenta, with just a bit of pork tenderloin and that sauce? This dish was not only delicious, but a perfectly beautiful entrée. My friend Cherrie and I decided to cook the entire menu of dishes from Phillis Carey’s recent cooking class. So good. I still have leftovers of the meat and sauce. Just enough for one more dinner, I think. The polenta is long gone, however.

The silverskin on the pork needs to be removed (so the herb rub will penetrate), but other than chopping up the herbs and patting them on the meat, there’s not much to the meat prep. It’s browned briefly and oven roasted for about 20 minutes.

The sauce calls for either fresh (what I used) or frozen blackberries mixed in equal quantity with Zinfandel wine (my DH’s favorite) and cooked down by half, then strained of all the seeds. It has some sugar added too, and at the end you can thicken it slightly, then add in a bit of chilled butter. You can make it ahead of time except for adding the butter.

As for the polenta – it could hardly be an easier side to make – this one though is creamy, not the firm type you chill and cut in squares to fry. This is made at the last minute with a mixture of milk and chicken broth, and some Boursin cheese (do not substitute any other brand). A bit is scooped onto the plate and I like to nap the pork tenderloin slices slightly overlapping and slightly on the polenta, then the hot blackberry sauce is drizzled on top.

printer-friendly PDF – the pork tenderloin and sauce

printer-friendly PDF – the boursin polenta

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A year ago: The Science of Taste
Two years ago: Pear Clafoutis (easy)
Three years ago: Mace Cake

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Do I like chocolate, or what? Oh gosh, is this ever good. The combo of these ingredients produces a soft, silky smooth flourless chocolate cake with an orange perfume. It’s really an easy cake to make, as long as you don’t mind separating the eggs, whipping up the whites separately, and doing the springform pan with buttered parchment in it. At the cooking class with Tarla Fallgatter, she served it still slightly warm. Oh my. Heaven. I ate ever single little morsel on that serving above. Would have licked the plate of a few crumbs if I could have without embarrassing myself!

Use good bittersweet chocolate. Don’t use semisweet (it has more sugar in it and you’d have to tinker with the sugar measurement in this recipe) or any other type. Tarla used brandy, but she mentioned that she’s also made it with some espresso powder added (dissolved in 2 T. of water). Once the cake is baked, you’ll find that it sinks by nearly 50% – a LOT. You can see in the photo how high the outside edges are – it was level full when it came out of the oven. Then poof, down it went. Makes no “nevermind” though to the taste.

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A year ago: Ham Loaf
Two years ago: Cabbage Patch Stew Revisited
Three years ago: Pumpkin Praline Custard (a low-calorie dessert)

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Goodness knows how many recipes I have on this blog for green beans. You’d think I’d have reached the end of the road and there couldn’t be any further variations on a green bean theme! But oh yes, there are! This time it’s caramelized red onions and toasted pine nuts. These are just delicious – succulent with the sweet red onion. Lots of texture too with the nuts and the beans cooked just al dente. You can make this ahead as far as the onions, toasted nuts, and cooking the green beans. So, these are good for a dinner party as you just have to reheat the ingredients for a few minutes.

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A year ago: Green Potatoes (mashed potatoes with spinach)
Three years ago: Beef Tenderloin in Puff Pastry

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