(photo taunton.com)

Almost nothing heralds Fall more than gingerbread and pumpkin cake, pie. Cool weather would help too, but alas, here in Southern California we’re in the low 100’s every day. But, back to Fall cooking here. Until I tried this cake, I thought a gingerbread is a gingerbread is a gingerbread. Sure, you could have a more dry one, maybe a moist one, one more highly spiced than another. But I doubt I would have thought a gingerbread could be something I’d really rave about.

Then Cherrie and I went to a cooking class at one of our favorite cooking school haunts, Our House South County, and Sarah made this fabulous cake. It just went right over the top for me. I’ve made it several times since. The apples make it different. I’d just never had apple gingerbread before. But then you add the “caramelized” part of it and it really did shoot through the moon. This cake isn’t hard, although it does take a bit of extra time to cook the apples and make the caramel. What a terrific accompaniment to a tummy warming dinner tied to fall flavors. If you make this, I guarantee you, you’ll have a hard time staying out of it.
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My notes say I made this in 2000. It came from Cooking Light. I’d been to a grilling cooking class in the previous month and the instructor had talked about how easy it is to grill corn. I’d grilled corn before, but when I read this recipe it sounded so different. Worth trying, I thought.

Here’s what you do: you pull the husks down – but you don’t pull them off. Some nearly always fall off anyway, you just can’t help that, but you want enough husks to completely cover all the corn. No kernels peeking through if at all possible. You remove all the silk, spread with a little butter or olive oil spray, season the cobs with this herb and spice combination, very gently pull the husks back into place covering the corn and carefully take a loose, long piece of husk and tie the husks at the top, like a topknot, a ponytail. Grill about 15-20 minutes. Remove all the husks and EAT. Really, really delicious.

There’s nothing hard about making this. But it does take a bit of time to make up the dry rub. Since I’ve made this so many times now, whenever I’m out of the rub I make up another BIG batch. Well, usually enough to last the summer season. They say that once spices are combined with others they tend to lose their effectiveness, their flavor. So just make up enough so you’ll use it up in a couple of months. It’s just as easy to make this for 2-3 batches than for one. As long as you like seasoning and lots of it, you’ll be certain to like this corn.

You can smear the raw corn with some butter if you’d like. I usually spray it heavily with olive oil spray instead. Then you sprinkle on the spice and herb rub, covering it very liberally. You need the butter or olive oil spray so the spices will stick to the corn. And if you’re just too weary to do all the tie-up-the-husks routine, you can put the corn in foil packets instead. Maybe not quite as good, but nearly so. Before corn is totally gone for the season, I recommend this.
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It was a few years ago and we flew from California to Philadelphia to attend the wedding of a young couple, friends. They’d met in San Diego, actually sailed with us on our boat one afternoon soon after they’d met. He was, is, a Navy pilot and close with dear friends of ours from Philadelphia. We thought they made a fine couple and wished them much happiness. The groom’s mother prepared a lovely feast for the rehearsal dinner. There were many hands helping in the kitchen, mine among them, and I fell in love with this incredibly easy side dish (or, it could be a main dish as is, or add some protein of some kind too).

I watched as MaryAnn made this sauce – she opened cans of chopped tomatoes, cubed up some cream cheese, chopped some basil, added a tad of wine vinegar, fresh garlic, and olive oil. All this was stirred up in a very large bowl, covered with plastic wrap and left to sit out for about 6 hours. The flavors developed, obviously and the cream cheese kind of dissolved, sort of. At serving time she made a heap of hot penne, combined the sauce and poured it onto a very large platter with additional basil and sprinkled the real-thing Parmesan cheese and it was done. The total amount of actual work in this is about 5 minutes. (I’m not counting the time to cook the pasta, of course.) Maybe 10 max. If you need to hold the sauce for longer, put it in the refrigerator. Just bring it back to room temp before serving. The dish can be served at room temp, actually, but I think it’s best hot.

And I’ll tell you, this is absolutely fabulous. I’ve made it many, many times since. It’s a cinch for guests. Tastes beyond wonderful.  Thank you, MaryAnn.

What’s good: well, that it’s so incredibly easy to make. You and your guests will rave about it. And yes, you DO leave it out at room temp. I think the acid in the tomatoes must be what keeps the dairy (cream cheese) from developing bacteria. It’s also delicious as left overs. A must make.
What’s not: nothing whatsoever.

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Back in May my friend Cherrie and I attended Ramekins Cooking School in Sonoma. We stayed at the B&B which is part of the school, and attended two cooking classes, the 2nd one a brunch class. Considering the menu, which included peaches and cream mimosas, scrambled eggs with pancetta and chive biscuits, blueberry and sour cream pancakes, smoked salmon and spinach salad, lemon biscuits AND this eggs benedict dish, I shudder to think how many calories and grams of fat we consumed that morning. I was positively astounded when my MasterCook software told me just now how many calories are in this benedict version. Oh — —! It can’t be possible. (Can it?) So I’m not going to tell you what it said. I’ll just say that this was wonderful. And if I make this sometime I’ll be certain to prepare some very low calorie sides, maybe just fruit.

I’ve always enjoyed Eggs Benedict. Usually the traditional type with ham or Canadian bacon, English muffins, poached eggs, of course, and Hollandaise on top. But this version is made with chorizo, molded into patties. It’s also made on a cornbread round (the size of English muffins), topped with a simple poached egg, and then topped with a delicious zesty chipotle Hollandaise sauce.

Usually I’m successful with Hollandaise – made in the blender. But I learned a bit about making it at this class, even though I’ve made it dozens of times. If the mixture gets too hot (using boiling butter, for instance) it will cause the Hollandaise to break – it separates, most likely never to be reunited in a homogeneous sauce. Also, if you keep it warm for awhile before serving, if it gets too hot there, it may also separate.

And maybe the most significant skill I learned at this class was how to make perfectly cooked poached eggs. These are techniques that must be a regular part of a chef’s skills, but I’d never heard them before.

• First, you BUTTER the skillet you’ll cook them in. You’d think why bother – you boil water in it – why would buttering it make any difference. But it does. Who knew?

• Then, to get the egg into the simmering water without it spreading all over everywhere. . . such a simple thing – you crack the egg into a small bowl (like a half a cup size) and gently lower the BOWL into the simmering water – about 1/3 of the bowl under water – and allow the water to swirl around the back of the egg, while the egg still remains IN the bowl to kind of surround it. It begins to cook. Fifteen seconds later you gently tip the egg out of the bowl into the water.

• The third trick was to undercook the poached egg just a little bit and remove it to a bowl of cool water. It can sit there for up to an hour, while you finish the rest of the breakfast or brunch. Then, when everything is nearly ready, you spoon the eggs back into the simmering water to just reheat them, then place them on the finished plate. How easy it was.

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A very brief update: I am free to walk SOME. The broken bone is mostly healed, but not entirely. But the doctor gave me my “walking papers,” so to speak. However, I can barely stand up, let alone walk. The foot and muscles and tendons have all forgotten what to do and it hurts to put weight on that foot – just because it hasn’t had to perform that function for 7 weeks. And my left foot (the good foot) has developed tendonitis from all the extra work it’s had to do in recent weeks, so it hurts more than the broken foot does. I’m nowhere near trying to cook. Or really walk more than about 20 very-slow-paces and that with a cane. Hopefully this will improve with practice in the next week.

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There’s maple syrup in this salad dressing. Sounds way too sweet, doesn’t it? Well, it is on the sweet side for a green salad, I’ll admit. But there is something seductive about the mixture of mayo, maple syrup and champagne wine vinegar. You counter the sweet with the vinegar, and it’s sublime. Usually I serve this in the Fall, and we’re steamy here in So. California these days, so I’m waiting for the new crop of apples to come in before I make this again. Although Granny Smiths are good year around, I know. This is kind of reminiscent of a waldorf salad, except there isn’t any celery in it. So think of this as a waldorf-ish green salad maybe.

This came from a cooking class with Phillis Carey, a cooking instructor I’ve mentioned before on this blog. She has such a creative culinary mind. I’m not that inventive – sure, I can put something together if the ingredients are plopped down in front of me, but I’d never have thought to make a salad dressing with mayo and maple syrup. And the combo of the apples, dried cherries and walnuts too.

I think there are too many apples in this salad, although maybe Phillis wanted the apples to be predominant. I prefer to make the lettuce the star (I use more greens than noted) and the dressing shines through. Then the fruit comes in as secondary. The recipe below is exactly as Phillis made it, with my notes in parens. But, as you start thinking about apples, maybe you’ll think about this salad. It’s excellent in whatever proportion you choose to use!
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(photo wholefoodsmarket.com)

Maybe I’ll have a photo of this special dessert this summer. But only if I can still find apricots in the market by the time I’m able to walk again.

Several years ago I attended a cooking class taught by Susan Hermann Loomis. She’s an American woman who took a left turn in her life and went to Paris. Attended culinary school, found jobs here and there cooking for wealthy families, met a Frenchman, married, bought a home in Normandy, settled down, had two children, then wrote a cookbook. And opened her home for cooking classes. And no, I didn’t attend a class at her home in Normandy. Maybe one day.

Susan’s a fun personality, and her cooking is quite straightforward. She cooks rustic. Country French. Seasonal. But oh, so delicious. This was the one recipe from her class that I made as soon as it was apricot season. I bought her cookbook and memoir On Rue Tatin and read it cover to cover as soon as I brought it home from the class. It’s not currently in print, but you can find used copies. But, I very much enjoyed her breezy style, and learning more details about her life. I can’t say that I’ve made very many of the dishes (you know, so many cookbooks, so little time, especially with a broken FOOT!), but I loved reading about them. I tagged the book in many places to remind me of the things I want to make.

I don’t cook with apricots very often. They have such a short season, after all. But they’re very much a celebrated fruit in Normandy, the region where Susan lives. She obviously subscribes to the Slow Food movement, using only local and seasonal ingredients. Some apricot varieties cook better than others – if you’re not careful they become mush. But if you have a good source, and they are full of flavor, by all means, this would make a super end to a meal. Be sure to make this in a baking dish that’s got at least 1/2 inch of space once you add all the ingredients, or it may bubble over in your oven. My notes remind me that it’s the topping that makes the dish. Otherwise it would be a fruit with a custard on top, I suppose. But this has a simple eggy topping that adds a piquant taste to it. Goes very well with those perfectly baked apricots.
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Thanks to my DH, he managed to make a nice chicken dinner the other night. Albeit, we only had one chicken thigh and some frozen asparagus each, but it worked. The freezer-burned asparagus was over the hill – but the chicken was scrumptious. We have leftovers, which is a good thing, and I would definitely make this again. The recipe came from Elise, over at Simply Recipes. I’ve made several of her recipes in the last 6 months, and have enjoyed them all. This one is a stand-out, for sure. The marinade and sauce (one in the same) is just delicious. You could eat it right out of the bowl it’s so tasty. Her recipe was adapted from an article in the New York Times, she said. The recipe is very simple – you make a cashew-based marinade in the food processor, with cilantro, garlic, soy sauce, brown sugar, lime juice and some fresh chiles. Some of this is reserved to scoop on top at serving time, but you marinate the chicken in this stuff for at least an hour, then grill or broil or bake and serve. Even my DH, who doesn’t cook, found this fairly easy to make. That’s saying a lot from him!

This marinade kind of resembles pesto, except rather than basil and pine nuts, this is cilantro and cashews. My recipe will include a few changes: (1) next time I’ll use boneless, skinless thighs (because I don’t like to eat the fatty chicken skin and most of the thick marinade sticks to the skin); (2) we used one small jalapeno and a part of a poblano chile, and I’d definitely do that again; and maybe if baking these (3) I’ll pat a bit of Panko crumbs on top of the chicken (I like the crunch of Panko); (4) I’ll make more of the sauce since it’s just so unbelievably yummy (I’d like to try it on other things – like a grilled pork chop – or as a spread on a sandwich, maybe even as a salad dressing – we both just l-o-v-e-d the sauce; and (5) I substituted brown sugar Splenda for the brown sugar just because we try to limit sugar in our diets. Although the recipe says to marinate just an hour or two, most likely it would be fine up to 24 hours. No more, though, or the chicken will begin to “cook” with the lime juice in it.

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It’s the capers, of course, that make this uniquely Sicilian. Whether the Sicilians were the first to utilize the little buds, I don’t know. I buy a giant economy sized bottle of capers at my local Italian market. A large jar isn’t cheap, but I’ve had this jar for about 5 years, I think. Caper berries are also available – they’ve just been allowed to mature to a bigger size, hence they’re berries, rather than buds. I do like capers a lot, but only in small quantity. I once ordered chicken piccata at some restaurant and it had so darned many of them, and probably a bit of the pickle juice, I couldn’t eat it. But in moderation, they add a kind of piquant character to any dish in which you choose to use them. Just be sure to rinse them a little before using them.

I think capers are not common in tuna salad, but when I had this, it was just really, really good. There’s nothing else in it that is that unusual. I’ve never been able to put my finger on why this combination is so darned good, but maybe it’s the capers and lemon juice together that bring something different to the equation. And the fact that you use imported tuna packed in oil. And there’s no mayo in it. There’s just lots of flavor there.

Sicily abounds with lemons. There are lemons on trees obviously, lemons in the market, lemons in art, lemons in ceramics, lemons even in the ancient carvings. If you buy dinnerware, often it will contain pictures of lemons. The early people obviously found every possible way to utilize the citrus. Sicilians use lemon juice in lieu of vinegar, so it’s found in every avenue of their cuisine. And how could I forget Limoncello? Oh, so good is that liqueur.

But we’re talking about a pasta salad here . . . this came from a Joanne Weir cooking class some years ago. I’d have gone right on by this recipe had I not tasted it, figuring what’s one more cold pasta salad with tuna. But this was just different. Better. Tastier. Tangier. Every time I’ve made this it has renewed my enjoyment of it.
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(photo from thatsanice.com)

We went to an Italian restaurant the other night – Vessia – in Irvine. One of the chefs from Prego opened it a couple of years ago. Good food. We’d been there when it first opened and were disappointed, but last night was a big improvement. My DH ordered their Braesiola.

When I looked at the word on the menu I wondered if it was something similar to the Braciole that I’ve made for years. Or if it was a completely different dish. Reading the fine print it sounded very similar. Why the different spelling, I wonder? Maybe some reader of mine who is Italian, or knows Italian cuisine can tell me why a dish can have so many different spellings? I did an internet search and found several also. Confusing to me! I think the meat roll is Sicilian in origin, but it’s claimed by all Italians, now.

So, I decided to take a look again at my version of this standby, Braciole – I think it’s pronounced brah-jol. Our Mexican waiter butchered the word big time as well as every other Italian word he tried to pronounce. I think I previously asked an Italian how to pronounce it.

Anyway, today I read online of many variations on the braciole theme. I liked reading about the addition of pine nuts, garlic, Pecorino-Romano cheese, parsley too. Here’s one version I liked. And I also like the option of cooking it on a bed of tomato sauce. I may have to try some of those options next time I make this. My recipe dates back to the 1960’s.

Because refrigerators with large freezers were a new fangled thing back then, there were lots of books and articles in magazines about how to use your freezer. Hard to imagine but I even bought a small BOOK about how to freeze. It seems like second nature now. But back then we didn’t have plastic bags. And initially we didn’t even have plastic containers (boxes) to store or freeze in either. You just used the ceramic (lidded Pyrex) or metal containers things were cooked in. Hard to believe, I know.

Because I still have the original clipping from this recipe, it was from an article about freezing meals ahead. About buying a larger amount of meat, prepping it, then fixing half and freezing half. Seemed like a logical thing to do. Have done it every since when I make this dish.

At the time I’m sure the refrigerator manufacturers probably paid marketing writers to punch out lots of material about why we needed to have these new-fangled refrigerator-freezers so they’d have umpteen more customers. Freezers had been around for awhile, but they were tiny little cubby-holes nested inside the top of the refrigerator. And they weren’t frost-free. Far from it. I remember many a time on a weekend putting bowls of hot-hot water inside the freezer unit trying to hurry-up the process of defrosting the thing. Using an ice pick to pry the chunks of ice off the sides. The opening was so clogged with ice and frost that you could hardly store anything in it. Or what was in it was completely enveloped in ice so you couldn’t remove it to use it. Then there were the piles of towels you needed to use to mop of the dripping water. And sponges and bowls to mop up the water on shelves below the freezer. It was an awful process. I hated it. Hated it. Hated it. But do it every homemaker did; otherwise the freezer was a useless feature.

But then they came out with frost-free. I wasn’t exactly first in line because such refrigerator/freezers were pricey and beyond the budget, but I do remember, in about 1967 finally getting one. Oh, was I excited! I can hardly believe it now, but my former husband, always pinching pennies, gave me a choice (I was a stay-at-home wife) of getting an old used car of my very own OR a new frost-free refrigerator freezer. We had one car only and he used it to go to and from work. Twice a week I took him to work and used those days for errands, shopping, etc. Then I had to pick him up from work too. The other days of the week I was at home all day. Baking, cooking, cleaning, writing letters, reading, etc. Anyway, I chose the refrigerator/freezer. I was greedy: I wanted both. But both I could not have. It was probably 5 more years before I finally had a car of my own.

So, back to freezing food and braciole. However you pronounce it, it’s a very simple stuffed meat roll. You start out with round steak, cut 1″ thick, then you butterfly it to make a big flat surface. Then it’s filled and rolled with Italian sausage, red bell pepper strips, some cheese and a bit of bread stuffing. You tie it, bake it, adding some additional cheese near the end. Remove, let sit briefly, then slice to serve.
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