Sometimes the simplest of ingredients can make the most magnificent of tastes. Such with this easy vegetable. It was only in the last 15 years or so that I have come to appreciate the flavor enhancements, the joy, of cooking with shallots. They have a kind of elusive taste. Not an onion. Not garlic, either. But somewhere in between. And you most likely know they’re expensive. Certainly more than onions. And since you usually use more quantity of shallot than of garlic, they can add up if you use very many of them. But I try to keep a few in my pantry all the time now. So I have them when I want them and don’t have to make a special trip to the market.

As with onions, once you cook them for awhile they develop this lovely seductive smoothness, and if allowed to caramelize, so the natural sugars in them darken and nearly burn, they have a whole other taste. Unforgettable, really.And then there’s the simple green bean. I go through spells of like and dislike with them. Sometimes I love them dearly, when they’re smooth and tender. Other times, after I’ve prepared some and they’ve been tough and stringy (even fresh) I’ve sworn off them for a season. I particularly like Blue Lake green beans. And don’t mind paying the price if the market carries them, as they more than likely will be tender. I also absolutely L-O-V-E haricot verts (heh-ree-ko-verr), the tiny little green beans originally made popular in France, hence the French name. They’re merely young green beans. If you grow beans yourself, just pick them very young and you’re most likely guaranteed of a tender mess of them. They’re available at my Costco, sometimes at Trader Joe’s, although they’ve been spotty as far as how fresh and tender they are. But if I find them at our local farmer’s market, I fall for them every time.

My mother used to make green beans quite often, and the usual method was to boil the heck out of them, until they were nearly mushy and quite gray. Sometimes she added a little onion, and some bacon. They’re really not too bad that way, but I prefer my green beans to be a little firm to the tooth, al dente, as they say. And I like them to be truly GREEN, not gray.In this dish, the shallots and the oil and vinegar are popped into a foil package to roast for an hour. You’ll want to serve this dish immediately when they’re done, so during that time you’ll cook the beans (the photo above is a combination of green beans and sugar snap peas) at the very last minute and combine them, pile them into a serving bowl and the beans will still be nice and green. Do be sure to scrape every last bit of shallots and balsamic glaze out of the foil package. If you’re not a real lover of green beans, this might convert you.
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My friend Linda emailed me one day just to tell me about this glorious apple cake. With the most unlikely name: Grandgirl’s Fresh Apple Cake from Georgia. Huh? She mentioned it again a few weeks later. We do share recipes all the time, and she’s a good cook. She still works full time, so can’t go to cooking classes much, if at all.

She has the MasterCook software also, and I’ve taught her how to use it, how to capture recipes off the web and easily import them into the software. It’s really quite easy. MasterCook is not expensive software, but it’s a very powerful program that accomplishes nearly everything I need to do to save my recipes. I have over 400 recipes in My Cookbook within MasterCook 9. It has a lot of functions that aren’t exactly “advertised,” but are subtle enhancements the program offers if you learn how to use them. Like scaling recipes. You’re having 10 for dinner and the recipe serves 6? No problem. Two keystrokes and you have the recipe re-sized for 10.One of the things I like the best is the fact that I can create my own custom cookbook design. In other words, I’ve set up a pretty design for all of my recipes. If you have printed out one of the recipes from my blog, the recipe was entered into MasterCook 9, then I converted it to a PDF file (for Adobe Acrobat) so you can print the exact recipe, with picture, in the format I’ve chosen.

I love working with MasterCook. One of its better features is how easy it is the copy and paste a web-based recipe into the program. It takes about 3 keystrokes to get to the import assistant, a small help screen that requires very little to get the recipe into MasterCook. I move a few things around sometimes (the program likes the recipe to be in a certain order), I hit a couple more keystrokes and the recipe is there. Sometimes a photo is available; if so, I import that too. I never forget that adage – a picture speaks a thousand words. Or, I use a fairly new feature called the Web Import Bar which will help you transfer a web recipe into the program. Also very easy.

So back to the fresh apple cake. Last weekend Linda drove up to our house (she lives about 50 miles south of us) on Sunday JUST to fix a wonderful dinner for us. Bless her heart! DH was delighted not to have to cook. I was delighted to finally eat two of Linda’s favorites that I’d not gotten around to trying. Grandgirl’s Apple Cake from Georgia was one of them. We’re still eating off the cake 5 days later. It’s SO SO good.

The recipe came from Paula Deen, and unfortunately it’s no longer available online at the food network, but you can find it at a couple of other sites if you do a search on the web for the title. It doesn’t need any changes or embellishments. It’s perfect just the way it is. It’s a dense, nutty cake. Just overflowing with apple flavor. And once the cake is baked, you pour over it this luscious buttermilk sauce that takes a bit of time to soak in. Please try this recipe. It doesn’t need anything to serve with it, but it’s good with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, or even a drizzle of heavy cream too. So, thanks Linda, for another winning recipe.
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Whenever the family (our kids and the grandkids and/or other relatives) come to visit over the holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter), I try to have something in mind for breakfast on the holiday morning. Some kind of a breakfast casserole, so I don’t have to become a short order cook for all the varied appetites. As I’ve mentioned before, I have a variety of brunch casseroles in my repertoire, and this is another one that competes for first place.

The original recipe for this came from Gourmet Magazine some years back. I adapted the recipe just a little – I couldn’t find brioche or challah bread the first time I made this, and King’s Hawaiian bread was available. If you don’t have that where you live, it’s just a very soft, eggy and SWEET bread. It’s too sweet for sandwiches. But it makes great toast. And it’s probably wickedly bad for you because it’s made with white flour and contains a fair amount of sugar. But it makes wonderful French Toast – by this recipe or any other.

But, because Hawaiian bread IS so sweet, I knew I needed to reduce the sugar. So if you use different kinds of bread, you’ll want to adjust the sugar accordingly.

The pineapple, just the crushed, canned type, is what makes this different. There isn’t all that much in it, so you really can’t SEE the pineapple much – but you can taste it. You can serve this with syrup if you choose, but it’s already so sweet and flavorful – and moist – it doesn’t really need anything. Maybe some fresh fruit, fresh juice, hot steaming coffee and you’re done. As with many of my brunch recipes, I get all the ingredients ready the night before so it’s very easy to make this the morning of.
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(photo from artichoke-festival.org)
One of the things – – that I may have mentioned before – – is that when I attend a cooking class, even though I usually know what the menu is before I go, a class will often open my taste buds to something different. Not necessarily a different food. There aren’t many American foodstuffs I haven’t eaten (except deep fried insects, and most organ meat). No, I mean that the chef/instructor makes something with a different twist. Or, makes something that would not have appealed to me if I’d just read the recipe. But at a class, it’s there, he/she is making it and I eat it. And I find that I enjoy it. It’s one of those a-ha moments. Like wow, this is really good. That’s what keeps me going back to cooking classes.

So, this recipe came from a class several years ago, and I wrote on the recipe handout that it was “really good.” I have my own culinary shorthand for note-taking at cooking classes. I scribble all over the handout, adding little notes here and there, describing cooking techniques, alternatives to ingredients, and even food additions the chef mentions. You’d be surprised how frequently the chef forgets to write in an ingredient or has the wrong measurement. Then, when the dish is served I have my hierarchy of (adverb) superlatives that I scribble in larger writing after the dish is served:

• no superlatives means it’s not worth making

• “Good” means it’s okay, probably not worth making

• “Very good” or “really good” means better than average and probably worth making

• “Excellent” or “delicious” means it was really very, very good

• “Fabulous” or “outstanding” means I must make this dish

So this one was a Very Good on my scale. Worth making, but maybe won’t gain “oh my gosh” kinds of comments at a dinner party. But still worth doing. You can’t have every single dish be the recipient of the highest of superlatives.

The chef/instructor was Nadia Frageri. She’s a native Italian who lives in San Diego, and still has a very pronounced accent. In fact her speech is so thick you must pay very close attention to her speaking, or you’ll miss things. She’s a very accomplished cook. Doesn’t have her own restaurant. Doesn’t even have a website. I don’t think she does computers. I don’t think she does catering. Hasn’t written a cookbook, either. But she teaches lots of classes in the San Diego area, and some in our area of Orange County. Nadia isn’t flamboyant or a comedian like some instructors are – she doesn’t have a running glib commentary to offer; she’s just a very good cook and wants you to go home with some of her family recipes.

So this is one of Nadia’s recipes. She recommended buying the artichoke hearts frozen at Trader Joe’s. The last time I checked they weren’t stocking them, however. You don’t want marinated ones for sure. If you can’t find frozen, then use canned. But still don’t use marinated. The goat cheese is the trump card here. It gives the artichoke hearts and garlic and cheese mixture a softness it wouldn’t otherwise have. It’s quite easy to make, the mixture can be made up ahead, and you just have to have the Italian bread on hand. French bread will work, but it has a much firmer crust, which you don’t want. And a smaller loaf – smaller around that is – is what you want, rather than a 4-inch diameter loaf. Or buy 2 smaller loaves. The larger slices are too hard to handle as finger food. Try it and let me know what superlatives you’d give this one.
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I suppose seasoned and/or sugared nuts have been around for a long time. Nut companies surely try to devise any way they can to entice us to buy more of their product. And I’ve tasted a variety of caramelized nuts, either walnuts or pecans, that go onto different dishes, most often salads. I’ve even tried the packaged ones from the grocery store. Didn’t like them. Too sweet.

So when Cathy Thomas, the Food Editor of our local daily newspaper, The Orange County Register, gave a cooking class at Sur la Table several years ago, I signed up. I’ve taken several of her classes – she’s fun and entertaining. She even leads food tours in our local Vietnamese community a couple of times a year. I’ve done that too.

But this particular class she prepared some kind of salad with THESE nuts. The only thing I remember about the salad is that it had sliced pears and blue cheese crumbles in it. But I’ll tell you, my taste buds were all over these nuts. You know the word addicting. Addiction: at dictionary.com it’s explained as the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming.Oh my. That’s me with these nuts. If you can stay out of the nuts, you’re a better person than I am.

I’ve made them dozens and DOZENS of times. I usually start out with the original recipe size, thinking oh, these will be enough to last for several salads. DH loves them too. We’ll enjoy having these for a week or so. WRONG. After I’ve made them I have to taste them to make sure they’re not too hot (what kind of lame reasoning is that for snacking?) Usually I’m cooking other things, making the salad. You know, the usual kitchen detail for any dinner. One more nut. Set the table. Another nut. Maybe two. Start the vegetable. Another nut. Measure out the 1/4 cup I think is appropriate for the salad and leave the rest to continue to rest on the foil. Another nut. And so it goes. I think you’ve got the picture.These are not overly sweet, although they surely do have some sugar in them. The pepper is what’s a bit different. Addicting. Spicy. Lovely. And I highly recommend you double the recipe!
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My mother was a fairly simple cook. She was raised on a farm, as was my dad, in the central valley of California. During the depression. As they grew up, mostly they ate meatless meals with an occasional chicken dinner on Sundays, at noontime, from one of the young hens in the chicken pen. So when I was growing up my mother followed her mother’s tradition – we had simple meals too – a small portion of meat (mostly beef), a vegetable, a salad maybe, and some kind of carb (Minute Rice was a new product – my mother thought it was marvelous, so we had it often).

My recollection of brussels sprouts from my youth is not a particularly good one. Overcooked baby cabbages don’t ring any culinary bells for me. And that’s most often how my mother cooked them. They were freshly cooked. But with nothing to embellish them except some salt and pepper, they had nothing to make them appetizing. My dad and mom both loved them, though. Fixed just that way. Often. Blah. Yuck.

But I did and do like cabbage in many guises. I just didn’t think I liked brussels sprouts. So many years later I decided to buy some fresh brussels sprouts – sold on the stalk – and found a recipe in Sunset Magazine. It may have been the recipe that inspired me to try it again. Lo and behold? I liked them. And I do prepare them in the fall and winter months, steamed, still with some bite to them, with a little butter, salt and pepper. Very good. I must admit.

Our kids didn’t think they liked brussels sprouts either, until I made this version below. The recipe takes the lowly sprout to a higher level. You steam or boil them until barely done, then toss with a dressing and let them marinate for a few hours. It’s the tart, piquant bacon dressing that makes them taste so darned good. I believe what I’ve printed below is the recipe from Sunset from years ago. I don’t add but a couple of slices (not 6) of bacon to this, and they are still very good. This makes a great side dish – it could qualify as a salad, I suppose. One of the good things about this is you can make it the day ahead too. They’re good hot or cold, but I prefer them cold or room temperature. Maybe this will motivate you to try it too.
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About 20 years ago a wonderful restaurant opened near our home, called Zov’s Bistro. Owned by Zov (pronounced like the letter oh) Karamardian, it was open for weekday lunches and a few nights a week for dinner. As the restaurant grew, and Zov’s well-executed Mediterranean food became more well known, they opened every day but Sunday. Zov is a wonderful philanthropist in our community, and loves to share her native Armenian cooking, although she has broadened the scope to include recipes from many different cultures around the Mediterranean. Now the restaurant houses the bistro, a bakery and a she’s opened a couple of other locations as well.

But back in the earlier days of the Bistro, Zov taught a cooking class starring some of her family favorites, of which this recipe was one. It’s not on the restaurant menu, unfortunately, or I would have it more often. I have no recollection what else she made that night, but I fell in love with this simple pasta dish, and have been making it ever since. You need to enjoy garlic, as it plays a prominent role. And the sauce needs to sit for awhile (at least an hour, or up to 2-3 hours) to develop its flavors. You can make this any time of year – it’s nothing more complicated than canned tomatoes, garlic, green onions, olives, capers and olive oil tossed with hot pasta and sprinkled with real Parmesan. It has some other things in it too that enhance the flavor, and you garnish with a lot of fresh basil. The anchovies (buy good ones if you can find them . . . they have so much more flavor than the cheap cans at the supermarket . . . go to an Italian deli if you have one) give it some character, but you never know they’re there. This is a great meal for a warm summer night.

So, I have a fun story to relate about this recipe. We had dinner with our son, Powell, and his wife the other night, and I mentioned that I had written up this recipe, which has always been a favorite of his. I’d forgotten that when he first met Karen he offered to help her with catering food for an art event a couple of weeks later. She wasn’t a caterer, but had offered to help a friend and was happy to have some help with it. Powell enjoyed cooking and loved entertaining when he was a bon vivant bachelor. Anyway, back then Powell had phoned me to ask advice on what recipes I had that might work for such an event where they could do no actual cooking, so they’d have to make everything ahead. This recipe was a standout for doing ahead, no question.

According to Karen, she was mightily impressed when Powell made this in a very large quantity for her event. According to Karen, her thoughts were along the lines of wow, this guy may be a keeper. It was a black-tie event, and the two of them served this dish and a bunch of others to the crowd of people. Toward the end, with Powell standing nearby in his tux, a businessman approached him and asked for his card. Probably Powell looked at him askance. Uhm. The guy said, we’d like you to cater something for us at our home. Powell laughed and said, we really don’t DO catering, etc. The guy said, well, what do you do and Powell explained that he is in the investment banking/bond biz. The guy looked at him and said what in the world are you doing here? Powell & Karen had a good laugh over that. So, a romance was made that night, according to them, over a big bowl of Pasta a la Puttanesca.
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We may be one of the few cultures to make baked meatloaf. Lots of other cuisines include a ground meat stuffed something (pastry, cabbage, etc.) or small orbs of some kind of chopped meat, but we Americans appear to have invented meatloaf (really, we did), meaning we started with finely chopped raw meat. Mostly I learned, earlier cooks used cooked meat to make any kind of chopped meat dish. I wanted to know more about the history of the dish, and found this:

• The raw, ground meat commonly used to make today’s American meat loaf has a humble heritage. In the 19th century, we know the Industrial Revolution made it possible for ground meat to be manufactured and sold to the public at a very low cost. At first, many Americans were slow to purchase raw ground meat products and generally regarded them with suspicion. Cooks continued to mince their meat (often already cooked, as was the practice for centuries) by hand. Companies selling meat grinders to home consumers at the turn of the century endeavored to change this practice by providing recipe

Regarded as the ultimate comfort food, there are certainly lots of types of meatloaf. Some with fillers and additions (bread crumbs, cracker crumbs, carrots, onions, eggs, red bell pepper) and many variations of toppings (savory tomato, catsup type, even teriyaki style). But the most common is with a tomato-based sauce on top. I’m no different than the crowd, so this may not be one of the recipes you’re going to try since you may already have a favorite sauce. But for me it’s simply the sweet and sour sauce that is a must here. The recipe came from one of my old 1960’s era military officer’s wives cookbooks, and since I first made it, this has been the standard by which any and all meatloaves are measured. In our family, this is THE recipe, and mashed potatoes on the side are an absolute must. No rice. No pasta. It must be mashed potatoes.

And generally I increase the sauce because everybody loves to put more sauce on the potatoes. So early on I began doubling it. No problem. It’s easy enough to make. I’ve made this with partly ground turkey, and it’s also very good. I think my daughter Sara makes it with all turkey and her family loves it that way. When I make it now I use 50/50 beef and ground turkey. That gives the meatloaf a little firmer texture, which is what we (and most people, I surmise) miss about eating ground turkey. It just doesn’t have the “tooth” to it that beef does. I’ve made this using Splenda (it’s fine) and with Brown Sugar Twin (also fine). So we can still have this but with less carbs.

Back when our children were teenagers we asked each of the kids to choose a weeknight and be responsible for preparing dinner for the family. (We’re a blended family, so between DH and I we have 3 children, two daughters and a son, all in their late 30’s now and for most of their teenage years we all lived together.) We had to plan ahead so the ingredients were on hand, and mostly the kids were pretty good about it. They got to fix one of their favorite meals, and we were all appreciative (at least I think we were). I will tell you that this item was a real “regular” on the menu. Everyone in our family loves this meatloaf and they all learned how to make it because they had to do it.
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I would be ever so negligent if I didn’t post one of my favorite recipes, my mother’s Crisp Apple Pudding. I’ve been making this for as long as I’ve been cooking (that began in 1962). It was written out in my mother’s small recipe journal, something she began when SHE got married in the 1930’s, a recipe from her mother. And she passed this recipe on to me when I got married. My mother is gone now. Bless her heart. I loved her so much. But she lives on in this recipe for sure. I think of her every time I fix this.

I believe – but I’m not sure – that this recipe came from a vintage (probably 1930’s version) Betty Crocker Cookbook. Or maybe it was a Better Homes & Gardens. Did they publish cookbooks back in the 1930’s? I think one time in a used book store I saw a very old, stained copy of one of those books and glanced in it, and sure enough, it looked like this recipe. It has one very unique technique that I’ve not seen in any recipes I’ve studied. Even today. I did a search just now, and after looking at probably 40-50 apple crisp recipes, with variations of toppings (this one has no oatmeal or brown sugar in it), not a single one of them sprinkles the flour/sugar topping with water. That’s what gives this apple dessert its crispness, a different texture for sure. I love it – of course, it’s what I grew up having when my mother made this, so it’s what I think is the “right” kind of apple crisp. Note that this dessert has a whopping 5 grams of fat per serving.

One year either Bon Appetit or Gourmet did a very in-depth article about crisps, buckles, pandowdies and slumps. They are all similar, but not quite the same. And this technique was not in there, either. I even wrote a letter to the writer of that article about it. Never heard from her. Oh well. Her loss!

So, here is my mother’s recipe: Sliced apples, piled into a 8×8 Pyrex or metal baking dish, with a floury-egg-sugar based crumbly topping, dotted with a little butter, and sprinkled with cinnamon and a bit more sugar. THEN, it’s sprinkled with water to give that topping an honest-to-goodness crust. Once baked the topping melds together into a crust, and rises a little bit since it has baking powder in it. Allow to cool about an hour, then serve with warm cream or whipped cream. Ice cream is okay too, but whipped cream is better, I think. I’ve cut down a little on the sugar – I think originally it called for 1 cup, so if you like it sweeter, go ahead and add the full amount. And I hate to say this, but in a pinch, this is marvelous for breakfast.
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If I owned a restaurant, this would probably be my signature dish. I’ve made this so often that I might be able to make it in my sleep. And it is my one-and-only recipe for which I can buy the ingredients in the late afternoon and have dinner on the table by 6:30 or 7:00 – for guests. This is a one dish meal – well, clarify that . . . it’s a grill in one meal. Except for dessert and appetizers, if you’re serving them, you can make this in no time at all. It may be the only recipe in my entire personal cookbook that qualifies. So, take note, if you’d like a company meal with little effort.

My friend Stacey is a good cook, but doesn’t really like spending hours in prep, nor does she have time anymore with two little ones getting into mischief. But after I made this at their house in the Bay Area one weekend several years ago, she said they invited lots of friends over and she got a lot of entertaining done – serving this for every one. So, Stacey, this one’s dedicated to you! You’re my hero!

I’ve told you before about Chris Schlesinger. His book, The Thrill of the Grill, is one of my favorite cookbooks. This recipe came from there. This is the fellow I spoke to, telling him my favorite recipe from his book was the Asian Slaw and he gave me this face. If you haven’t read that story, click here. When he signed my cookbook, I hadn’t prepared this salmon dish yet. I just wish Chris was reading my blog and he’d know that this is my favorite recipe to date. And I’ve amplified on his recipe too. I’ve thought about writing to him tell tell him all about what I’ve done to his recipe. But oh well. He’s a famous chef and all. I think I won’t.

For awhile, some years ago, I cut down the amount of the dressing on this salad, to reduce the total fat grams, but have since decided that the full amount is needed; it’s an important component of the dish so it covers the salad sufficiently and you have enough left over to pour a little over the salmon itself. And if you grill vegetables to go with, like I do, then you need a bit more for them too. Salmon has plenty of fat in its tissues, but it’s good fat, so don’t be thrown by the fat content on this one. I’ve done the math and the salad dressing is fairly inconsequential.

I do need to talk a bit about watercress. It’s a little hard to find – at least it is here in California. Whole Foods sells some funny kind of young watercress still growing in vermiculite covered in a little root ball. It has different roundish leaves. And has almost no flavor. This is NOT what you want for this. You need the real thing, the kind of watercress that’s actually grown in water. It has fattish stems (which you don’t use in the salad) and wonderful crinkly leaves. The taste is peppery, not to everyone’s taste, I suppose. I love it, though. So seek out good, fresh watercress.

Costco sells this huge slab of boneless salmon. It is farm-raised; not my favorite thing anymore, but I will buy it on occasion. I prefer wild caught now, and if you can find it, by all means do so! You wipe it off, spray it with olive oil spray, then place it on two large pieces of greased heavy-duty aluminum foil, crimp up the edges around the salmon (you don’t seal it or cover it). Add a bit of salt and pepper. Meanwhile, you fire up your grill and start working on the vegetables, whichever ones you decide to use. I like putting something red with this dish – the color is just glorious on a large platter. So, you need red bell peppers for sure, even yellow or orange ones too. Asparagus works also. And zucchini too. In a pinch I’ve also thrown a large quantity of halved cherry tomatoes on the platter at the end (not grilled, of course). And DH’s favorite is small red onions, halved. All the vegies need to be well oiled, then grilled. Then you put on the salmon and it’s done when you begin to see some white foam seep up through the middle of the salmon. At the last minute toss the watercress salad with some of the dressing, spread it down the middle of the large platter, then slide the salmon off the foil and on top of the salad and add the grilled vegies (that you’ve kept hot) around the edges. Serve immediately to raves. Guaranteed.
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